How to interface raindrop sensor with evive?

Introduction

Raindrop sensor is a board on which nickel is coated in the form of lines. It consists of detector board and the control board which controls the sensitivity through a potentiometer. The rain sensor detects water that completes the circuits on its sensor boards’ printed leads. The sensor board acts as a variable resistor that will change from 100k ohms when wet to 2M ohms when dry. In short, the wetter the board the more current that will be conducted.

How raindrop sensor works?

It works on the principle of resistance. When there is no water drop on board it’s resistance is high so we get high voltage. When the water drop is present, it reduces the resistance because water is the conductor of electricity and presence of water connects nickel lines in parallel so reduced resistance and as a result, there is reduced voltage drop across it.

Interfacing raindrop sensor with evive

Wiring

The following circuit diagram explains the circuit connection of the raindrop sensor with evive.

Follow the steps below to connect the sensor to evive:

1. First of all, take the detector board and insert two female to female(yellow and green in circuit diagram) wire in the pin slot of the board.
2. After this, connect the other end to the control board. From the other end of the control board connect three female to male jumper wires(orange, red and black in circuit diagram).
3. connections to the evive board:

• GND pin on the control board connects to the GROUND pin on board.
• VCC pin on the control board connects to the 5V pin on board.
• AO (analog output) pin on the control board connects to A0 pin on board.

Controlling RGB strip using raindrop sensor 

Interfacing RGB  strip with evive

Follow the steps below to connect the RGB strip  to evive:

1. First of all, take an RGB strip and solder three male jumpers on each pin.
2. connect +5v jumper to the 5v power supply and GND jumper to the ground pin.
3. connect Din jumper to digital pin no. 7 on board as shown in the circuit diagram.

Explore: If you want to get digital output, connect the DO pin from the control board to the digital pin on the evive board.

Arduino Code

After making the complete circuit upload the following Arduino code 

1. Raindrop sensor Arduino code:
2. Raindrop sensor with RGB strip Arduino code:Output

The final setup after the connection is shown in the figure.

The RGB strip after different variation in the amount of the rainfall is shown below.

• When the rainfall is very HIGH.
• When the rainfall is MODERATE.
• When the rainfall is LOW.