A beelogger on ESP32 basis, part 4: Test setup: The rain sensor

I bought a rain gauge from china, just google “rain gauge sensor aliexpress” for the product, it was round about 15€.

For my test-setup, I simply cut off the connector and connected the wires directly to GND and GPIO4 and used the internal pull-up resistor:

Adding it to esphome is straight forward and easy. I’m using the pulse counter component, it can use the pulse counter peripheral of the ESP32 and can work in standby-modes:

substitutions:
  update_interval: 5s

sensors:
 - platform: pulse_counter
    name: "Rainfall Pulse Counter"
    id: rainfall_pulse_counter
    use_pcnt: true
    count_mode: 
      falling_edge: INCREMENT
      rising_edge: DISABLE
    pin:
      number: GPIO4
      inverted: true
      mode:
        input: true
        pullup: true
    unit_of_measurement: "mm"
    icon: "mdi:water"
    update_interval: ${update_interval}
    filters:
      - multiply: 0.367
      - debounce: 10ms
    total:
      name: "Rainfall Total Pulses"

The value “0.367” is explained here:
https://community.home-assistant.io/t/how-to-measure-integration-of-rain-pulse-counter-into-daily-value/136709

Then I created two utility meters that convert it to a daily and hourly basis within homeassistant like this: