Usually rain-alarms employ a single sensor. A serious draw-back of this type of sensor is that even if a single drop of water falls on the sensor, the alarm would sound. There is a probability that the alarm may be false. To overcome this draw-back, here we make use of four sensors, each placed well away from the other at suitable spots on the roof. The rain alarm would sound only if all the four sensors get wet. This reduces the probability of false alarm to a very great extent. The four rain-sensors SR1 to SR4, along with pull-up resistors R1 to R4 (connected to positive rails) and inverters N1 to N4, form the rain-sensor monitor stage. The sensor wires are brought to the PCB input points E1 to E5 using a 5-core cable. The four outputs of Schmitt inverter gates N1 to N4 go to the four inputs of Schmitt NAND gate N7, that makes the alarm driver stage.
Clever Rain-Alarm Circuit Diagram
When all four sensors sense the rain, all four inputs to gates N1 through N4 go low and their outputs go high. Thus all four in-puts to NAND gate N7 also go high and its output at pin 6 goes to logic 0. The out-put of gate N7 is high if any one or more of the rain-sensor plates SR1 through SR4 remain dry. The output of gate N7 is coupled to inverter gates N5 and N6. The output from gate N5 (logic 1 when rain is sensed) is brought to ‘EXT’ output connector, which may be used to control other external devices.
The output from the other inverter gate N6 is used as enable input for NAND gate N8, which is configured as a low-frequency oscillator to drive/modulate the piezo buzzer via transistor T1. The frequency of the oscillator/modulator stage is variable between 10 Hz and 200 Hz with the help of preset VR1. The buzzer is of piezo-electric type having a continuous tone that is inter-rupted by the low-frequency output of N8. The buzzer will sound whenever rain is sensed (by all four sensors). 6V power supply (100mA) is used here to enable proper interfacing of the CMOS and TTL ICs used in the circuit. The power supply requirement is quite low and a 6-volt battery pack can be easily used. During quiscent-state, only a negligible cur-rent is consumed by the circuit.
Even during active state, not more than 20mA current is needed for driving a good-quality piezo-buzzer. Please note that IC2, being of TTL type, needs a 5V regulated supply. There-fore zener D1, along with capacitor C2 and resistor R5, are used for this purpose.A parallel-track, general-purpose PCB or a veroboard is enough to hold all the components. The rain-sensors SR1 to SR4 can be fabricated as shown in the construction guide in Fig. 2. They can be made simply by connecting alternate parallel tracks using jumpers on the component side.
Use some epoxy cement on and around the wire joints at A and B to avoid corrosion. Also, the sensors can be cemented in place with epoxy cement. If the number of sensors is to be increased, just add another set of CD40106 and 7413 ICs along with the associated discrete components. Another good utility of the rain-alarm is in agriculture. When drip-irrigation is employed, fix the four sensors at four corners of the tree-pits, at a suit-able height from the ground. Then, as soon as the water rises to the sensor’s level, the circuit can be used to switch off the water pump.
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