Wind and Rain Sensors for Weather Station (Wind Vane / Anemometer / Rain Gauge)

Want to build your own weather station? This sensor kit has a cup anemometer and wind vane to measure wind speed and direction and a tipping bucket style rain gauge, together with associated mounting hardware.

The sensors in this kit are active mechanical sensors that work by physically interacting with the wind and rain. They use magnets, reed switches and moving parts to produce simple signals that a microcontroller or single board computer can use to calculate wind speed, wind direction and rainfall.

The sensor cables are terminated in RJ11 connectors (each sensor only uses two wires though, so if you wanted you could snip off the ends and connect the wires to a different kind of connector). Armatures to mount the sensors are included, as well as a short metal mast that can be lashed to the top of a suitable pole with the included jubilee connectors.

Please note that this kit contains the mechanical wind and rain sensors only, and doesn't include any electronic components. You'll likely want to hook these sensors up to something like a Weather HAT (for Raspberry Pi), a weather:bit (for micro:bit) or a Weather Shield (for Arduino).

Resources

Getting Started with Weather HAT

This comprehensive guide from RPi contains loads of detail on how to DIY your own weather station (it also contains lots of info about how these sensors work and how you can write code for them).

If you need pictures of how everything goes together, check out SparkFun's excellent hookup guide!

Datasheet

Kit Includes

  • Wind vane
  • Anemometer
  • Rain gauge
  • Short metal mast (made of two metal poles that slot together)
  • Two plastic arms for mounting the sensors
  • Mounting hardware: jubilee clips, nuts, bolts and cable ties