The leaf can accurately represent rain and can be alerted to it too using the alarms.
Mine does not detect dew as its constantly heated, mine records the 1st instance of rain and then the diy heater dries it a short time later thus signalling that its stopped raining. You can see this on the graphs shown below, this is in late winter, evening time with no sun, by rights the leaf sensor should have stated moisture throughout the whole even and not drying off til much later, perhaps not until the next day.
I use the Weather Display software the does all my alerting for me, if even changes my websites to say rain etc.
The heater. I took the sensor off the original mount. i then cut the tracks to remove the lower smaller section and mounted it to an outside electrical junction box with the top cutout enough that all the tracks would be exposed to the heat. I added 3x 5w 12v bulbs spread out (can be done with one and some foil i spose). Then connected it to a PC psu. thats it. been working for the last what 6 years i think...
Hey Bashy, I am super interested in duplicating your setup. Do you have any additional details as to how you performed the above? Or any pictures? Thanks in advance for anything.
Hi, this will only work if you use Weather Display software.
The setup is very simple, get an outside
junction box (just an example, check measurements before you buy), the lid has to be big enough for the leaf sensor to cover it
Cut out a large hole in the lid leaving about 5mm edging so you can hot glue the sensor to it.
I wouldnt worry about that small section at the bottom of the leaf sensor, i cut the tracks to that part, makes no difference anyway.
Now get some of those small
12v bulb holdersand so of the
12v 5w bulbs (exact ones i bought)
Get a
12v PSU (perfect for the job as it includes that green adapter) that can handle 3 bulbs.
Get some
12v cableNow just devise something to hold the bulbs in the box, i used a metal T piece i think, mecanno is brill for this.
I have it wired up to run 24/7, just don't have the bulbs too close to the sensor, prob leave about 5cm gap.
You will need to replace a bulb now and then, i think the last time i did was about a year, maybe 2 years ago.
But like I said, you need something like WD software to do the website part, basically, in WD you can set the leaf sensor as a rain duration sensor, and it will then change the main screen icon to rain when its raining and been snow but that's hit and miss as its temp dependant, you can fine tune that. Anyhoo, once you have WD doing the weather icon and current condition, its then replicated in the clientraw file and can that update your website to say its raining exactly at the time you've set it to update, i set my WD to update the clientraw file every 3 seconds, so my site is told pretty much the second it starts to rain.
One thing of note, i chose 3x 5w and not too close to the sensor for a reason and that's so that it does not dry up too quickly, i.e. if its light spits and spot or drizzle, you don't want the sensor to dry to quickly else it will say its Dry when in fact it is raining, that's a trade of though and that's that it will take longer to dry it out when its just normal or heavy rain and it stops. I ain't too keen on that but i prefer it to detect drizzle so i live with it.
Hope this helps...
