Datalogger development for tipping-bucket throughfall measurement with open-source tools

Manual throughfall gauges can not apply to explore the temporal properties of precipitation redistribution.  To follow the interception temporarily it is necessary to use automatic gauges. Commercial rainfall data-loggers are suitable but in a spatially heterogeneous environment, like agroforestry systems, need a large number to represent the spatial differences. To reduce the cost, we started to develop a microcontroller-based data logger.

As a test case, we develop new auxiliary equipment for an already working custom trough in our riparian alder plot. It is a large surface trough with a big container where water level change is sensed. This gauge works with a commercial data logger which will be used for validation purposes. The planned addition is a tipping bucket, which provides a digital signal directly. The simple task is to log the timestamp of the tips. After many iterations, an ARM
Cortex-M0+ based architecture was selected, which integrates all the necessary components of a simple data logger.  The development is fully open-source shared through git (https://github.com/kaliczp/hvlog). The presentation shares the experiences accumulated during the continuous development.

This research has been supported by the EFOP-3.6.2-16-2017-00018 in University of Sopron project and the corresponding author's work has been also supported by the János Bolyai Scholarship of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and ÚNKP-19-4-I-4-SOE-4 New National Excellence
Program of the Ministry for Innovation and Technology.