Development Of Low Power Automatic Rain Gauge(ARG)

Automatic Rain Gauge(ARG) is used to monitor rainfall. The ARG runs on an embedded system using a microcontroller as the main processing unit. Based on the specifications of ARG, needed a microcontroller that has low-power consumption and has enough storage space to hold temporary data.ARG is not only placed on the climatological station but also put on outdoors away from sources power and remote area. This became a problem because ARG should have an independent power supply system. Source power for ARG using battery and solar panels for recharging. The main consider is how many power consumption need for ARG and then make comparison with power produced from solar panels. In addition ARG should be able to perform data communication between the server and remote places so ARG devices could be controlled and data could be obtained directlyOn testing without solar panels, ARG devices using the ATmega128 was able to survive for 54 hours using TOPGUN LiFeP04 4200 mAh 6.6 V battery. Power required in this ARG devices is 0.25 watts. While at ARG devices using MSP430FR5969 are capable of surviving for 59 hours. Power required ARG devices using MSP430FR5969 is 0.23 watts. For monitoring the data, the system is equipped with application ARG Server Management(ASM) installed on a server computer. ASM is also able to control ARG devices remotely and directly using the GSM network.By comparing between the powers generated from solar panels 20 watts using bq24650 MPPT charging control for optimization and power required by ARG devices, this system has a surplus of power each days. In the three days of testing, start time process of charging at 8 AM. While discharge processing start at 5 PM. Using ASM application data monitoring can be performed optimally.