My rain gauge died again :(

A short while ago my AAG 1-wire rain gauge stopped telling me that rain had fallen at all. The 1-wire device still shows up in Linux and is readable, but the 1-wire counters never change. I’ve checked by dribbling water into the funnel from a jug and the buckets tip, but there’s still no change in the counters. The circuit for the system is quite simple as far as I recall, being little more than the 1-wire counter chip and a reed switch in a housing next to the buckets, with a magnet fixed to the buckets tripping the reed switch each time the bucket tips.

It could be a failure of the 1-wire chip, or (as I suspect is more likely to be the case) the magnet is not activating the reed switch for some reason, perhaps because it passes the reed switch too fast. I have thought about trying a different, perhaps stronger, magnet, but finding one of a suitable size and weight looks like a bit of a lost cause.

I could throw in the towel and buy a new rain gauge, but they all seem to want to come with displays or be wireless or other stuff I just don’t want, with a price tag to match.

I’m about to disable it in the software and bring it inside to see if I can do anything, but at the moment I’m not feeling very hopeful 🙁

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