Ultrasonic snow depth gauge

HI Niko

Yes, I’m using one because the ultrasonic sensor needs 12 volts regulated so I added a regulator to the HobbyBoards power injector. Last Winter is just ran 12 v over a spare pair on the CAT5 cable. I also have several other temp/humidity sensor in my crawl space so I decided the power injector was the easiest way to go.

Cheers

:smiley:

MikeyM

Thank you MikeyM,

(Sorry for my Angais, it is about a translator)

Cheer for your information they are invaluable for me.

Does that function well, simply the graph does not arrive when that I make a simulation without snow reach the line 0V and you?

Can you give me your configuration under WD because I am a little right in
the parameters!

I install a new probe Ultrasonique Saturday in order to gain of has
performance. And of the precision.

Thank you.
Serge

Hello,

My probe ultrasonic is of origin a probe radar of retreat of car (Distance
from detection: 2 cm to 150 cm).
After several test that functions correctly, the precision is correct (error of 2 centimetres).
To avoid the parasites I put a pesticidal filter.

http://www.localsat.net/observations/extrarealtimegraphmore.gif

Serge


LD0000593504_1.jpg

Hello,

(Afflicted for my English, it is about a translator)

Brian will be you he possible to multiply by x10, indeed that will make a reading direct of graph.

Thank you.
Serge
France


Hi Serge.

Graphs look good. If I “mouse over” the graph line mine will show 10X the voltage, not on the graphs that upload to my webpage. I think we are making progress.

Cheers

:smiley:

MikeyM

Good evening,

Here the model of my detector of snow which I use.

Serge
France


IMG_1694.JPG

Hi everybody

I am starting to build a snow sensor we don’t get much in the UK
but you never know

My question

On my 1 way system

I am using a solar sensor, soil moisture sensor, and a wet leaf sensor

I’ve noticed in whether display 1 wire settings there is a box for the id rom for a snow sensor
what hobby board does this relate to

The module I have chosen message from 0 - 6 feet 1 inch equals 10mv

Thanks

mick

its a mv ADC (battery voltage sensor)
e.g like the leaf or soil moisture sensor

Hi

I have a spare hobby board moisture board, which would be perfect for this

Will this work alongside the other two moisture boards. I am using
thanks
:slight_smile:

Greetings from a newbie to this site:

Last year I constructed an ultrasonic snow gauge. The object was to make one that was completely wire free because several identical units might be placed in locations with no power within a 5 mile radius of the HQ building. I used a pair of XBee-PRO PKG RS-232 RF Modem radios (short range only for the moment) and powered it with solar panels and batteries. Due to the limitations of battery power, I can’t have the sensor or radio modem on full time.

Instead, I use a Parallax BASIC Stamp PLC to contol the system.
(http://www.parallax.com/Store/Microcontrollers/BASICStampModules/tabid/134/txtSearch/plc/List/1/ProductID/290/Default.aspx?SortField=ProductName%2CProductName)
The PLC turns on the sensor, takes multiple readings, averages them, turns on the radio modem, send the readings, and then shuts off the radio and sensor and enters “sleep mode” for about three hours. The way to tailor the load to the battery and solar array is to vary the time between readings - the longer the “sleep”, the less power per day is consumed.

Before 2007-2008 winter set in here the system was up and running. It could accurately and repeatedly measure the distance to the plywood measurement “ground” surface. It could accurately measure the height of my “test snow” - piles of cardboard boxes. However, when the snow arrived, the system could not measure snow depth. It didn’t matter if the snow was soft and fluffy or had a crusty surface, the sensor would respond as if all the ping had been absorbed by the snow (showed maximum range) . It used an EMS sensor (http://emssensors.com/ultrapics/s1225sp.htm), and since this sensor does not have an adjustable gain control, there was no way to experiment with boosting the gain.

This summer (2008) I decided to try some modifications. I used a SensComp Mini-AE sensor (http://www.senscomp.com/specs/Mini-A%20PB%20spec.pdf) which has adjustable gain as well as range zeroing features (which I won’t use). The sensor is mounted in a Davis weatherstation pagoda. This was not an original thought - I borrowed the idea from another snow sensor (http://voksenlia.net/met/snow.php), so I hope that it will adequately function for me. At least I have some confidence that this sensor will work, and its relatively cheap and water resistant when in a housing. It is also internally temperature compensated, so I don’t have to program a speed-of-sound routine. Sheltering it in a pagoda should keep it at ambient temperature without undo sun heating.

Today I began system calibration. I know the the PLC is translating the analog voltage from the sensor correctly since it provides an ASCII output of the analog voltage appearing on the sensor lead - good to 1 millivolt. The PLC will also output the snow depth in inches by subtracting the current reading from the sensor reading of a base measurement table (no snow), thus providing the height of the snow surface from the ground. IN addition, it will also send the current battery voltage so that I can keep an eye on “system health” by monitoring the state of the power supply. If the battery voltage dips too low after several cloudy days, the charge controller will turn off power to the PLC until the batteries are recharged. The PLC will then restart and reboot. The charge controller will also limit the charge rate to a temperature compensated sfae level for the batteries ( two 12 volt 7 amp/hr gel acid batteries).

This system is a rough prototype for a device which could be part of a network of a hub PC storing data sent by several automated gauges in the field. The current XBee short range radios could be replaced by long range units (up to several miles range) which have the ability to be hardwired or programmed to send a unique ID with the data record. It would be easy to set up a net using identical systems and only changing the unique ID code on each unit.

At the receiving end I have an old PC (which also hosts our Davis WeatherLink software) on a LAN running a serial port monitoring program which simply dates all the incoming data transmissions from the snow gauge and maintains them in a log file. I am also running FTP host software on that PC so that any interested researcher can use a browser to download the data files containing snow depth data for future analysis.

Why do all this? I work with a group that is involved in endangered butterfly habitat restoration, and one of the unknowns in our world is the ability of butterfly eggs to “winter over.” It appears that butterfly eggs, laid on the stems of host plants may be protected by the accumulation of insulating snow. While there are volunteers out there reading manual snow rulers all winter in several locations, the use of automated snow gauges the use of might be helpful in assuring some level of measurement consistency.

If all of this works, the next step would be to begin to pick away at the costly items and try to drive the unit cost down to a reasonable level.

I hope some of the experiences here will be of help in other’s efforts to design ultrasonic snow gauges.

Warpdrive

Hi, great information.

Where are you?

GREAT !! Nice to see some more people working on snow depth sensors.Mine should be moved back outside for more testing within the next week or 2. So far it has been working flawlessly attached to 100 ’ of shielded CAT5 cable in the computer room. The problem that I had last Winter was HUGE spikes in the data, but due to several modifications I made and a different interface board, a HobbyBoard humidity board minus the humidity sensor, everything seems to be working fine right now. Time will tell.

Cheers

:smiley:

MikeyM

Really super, as says MikeyM, for my case it works correctly.
Serge

Here’s the latest graph being produced with GraphWeather. This is a graph of today’s current level of snowfall. Currently reading 26.6 - 26.7 inches under an indoor test setup. I’m still having problems getting the weekly, monthly and yearly graphs to display correctly, but with some help from the GraphWeather forum I hope to get those working also. At least we’re making progress and have gotten rid of the spikes that plagued eongibier and I last year.

http://home.ptd.net/~mikeym/graphsnow1.jpg

Cheers

:smiley:

MikeyM

Very nice. I hope it does well.

Mark

MikeyM,

Great project. I have worked to develop a system using the Senscomp Sensor and their 6500 Ranging module. You can see some details from our www.ohararp.com/blog.html

Recently a climatologist in Norway has asked us to add a Senscomp Ultrasonic Sensor and a simple temperature sensor to our SD GPS Data Logger to track snow depth measurement and glacial velocity movement on glaciers in the North Atlantic Region of the world. Using our skills we developed a quick prototype for initial testing at a fraction of the cost of traditional weather stations ($6K vs $400). We included a 10AH lithium ion battery and solar charging to boot! Let us know if you have a custom app that you would like us to look into! In the meantime enjoy the photos!

This was our intial version, but we are going to be adding some long range radio modules that are similar to the XBEE devices to your units. We then intend to serve this information to the ethernet with a simple serial to ethernet converter or possibly an FTP connection.

Some time ago (8/2008) I posted a long message about my attempts to use an ultrasonic sensor and a Basic Stamp programmable logic controller to build a snow depth sensor.

Much of it works fine. It is solar powered, using 2 12 volt panels to charge 2 alarm system batteries providing both 12 volt and 24 volt DC power. The sensor is a SensComp mini ae, and the output is an analog voltage (0-10VDC) which the analog-to-digital converter in the Stamp PLC converts. The data is then sent by radio modem to a nearby (indoor) PC where I can access it via FTP over the internet.

All the above works fine EXCEPT:

The SensComp sensor ( Mini-AE # 616100) works perfectly when presented with pieces of plywood at differing heights. All are reported correctly. When the snow started, it immediately reported 9.99 volts. In other words, it reports maximum range voltage, which I interpret to mean the echo from the snow surface is not being “heard” so the assumtion is it is beyond maximum range. There is a sensitivity adjustment on the sensor itself which is currently set to maximum. The sensor is about 8 feet from ground level, and the snow depth is currently about 2 feet.

I have visited one website for a somewhat similar system employing a senscomp Mini-AE and remarks there suggest that the sensitivity may be set too high.

see: http://voksenlia.net/met/snow.php

Does anyone have any experience with this sensor? Its very difficult to get to the sensitivity set screw on the sensor as mounted, and I was hoping to avoid doing this too many times if possible.

Thanks, Warpdrive

Hi Warpdrive

I’m using the Mini-AE # 616105 sensor which is the .5 - 20 ft sensor and I have the sensitivity set to about 2/3 or 66 % like Steinar suggested and mine has worked fine this Winter. I do get occasional spike in the data, but WD will filter them out.

Here’s the link to my snow depth sensor readings.

http://home.ptd.net/~mikeym/extrarealtimegraphmore.gif

And this is a link to a different graph. I need to incorporate some filter to eliminate the occasional spikes.

http://home.ptd.net/~mikeym/graphsnow1.jpg

Of course the spikes aren’t showing up today - go figure.

And yes it is a real pain to set the sensitivity once the unit is mounted. Good luck.

Cheers

:smiley:

MikeyM

Many Thanks MikeyM. I’ll give it a try. I am located in upstate NY, and we have about 26 inches on the ground right now.

Warpdrive

I am thinking of using a Mini-AE myself and tried to get SensComp to send me a quote for shipping to Canada. They couldn’t tell me how much it would cost and whether they can use UPS standard or express, until I put an order in. :?

mikeym, when you say occasional spikes, is that like several times a day? Also, from what I have read, the sensor does not reliably report depths until there is a build up of snow that’s at least several inches from the base?