First off thank you for reading. I know there is a weather enthusiast with like minds on here. Here is my goal, I purchased several Texas Electronics Rain Gauges 525USW. Rainfall is critical for this mission. But the last half of the equation has to be done super cost effective. I need to interface rain gauge only to some way to get the data to be viewable online, I have chosen weather underground for its wide acceptence. But now I am trying to settle on that bridge. Here has been some thoughts:
I know Peet bros station have appeared inexpensive used and they offer an easy way to interface any tipping bucket, but then I can probably interface to a raspberry pi Ono wifi and get the rainfall only data to Wunderground. But I probably looking at over $130 with a used station and a pi.
I saw no solutions where I could hook up the gauge directly to a GPIO port and run software on a pi to do this at this time.
So I cam up with an idea of these EcoWitt Gateway for $25 they say they send to Wunderground, and I thought of buying the Ecowitt rain ague and tearing down the gauge and put the transmitter into the Texas Electronics since it probably uses a reed switch to report rainfall. I know my range would be reduced a bit being in a metal gauge but Im not asking for very far distance, maybe 25 feet. I think this could be done for under $100 and possibly less if I can get some used EcoWitt gauges with good transmitters to tear out.
If there some method I have not thought of? We are trying to develop an inexpensive Rainfall Network when there is excessive rainfall with as best accurate gauges we can get, but some how get near real time. All sites will be located next to home with wifi. I even think the Ecowitt can sent alerts out if parameters are exceeded, that is a big plus. Anyone familiar with EcoWitt bridge to wunderground and these alerts, does this sound like the right direction... Thank you for any suggestions or input.
Ron