So I have one of those plastic conical guages that all the hardware stores and garden centers sell. I dusted off some high school math a while back (volume of a cone, trigonometry etc) and that suggested that the gauge was not that far off. So happiness.

But this morning the guage says we had 16mm yesterday, and if my pool has risen even a cm then I'm the heir to all the thrones in the world.  So grumpiness.

So what's a cheap, cheerful and reasonably accurate alternative? I don't want to be running wires all over the place. Bluetooth etc would be fun but isn't mandatory, I don't mind going outside once a day to read and empty the guage.

Edited September 28, 20232 yr by Bobster.
punctuation

I wonder if its worthwhile doing a DIY bucket type rain gauge... for here the amount of dust and sand and mostly lack of rain may make it less useful, but a ESP8266 with a small solar panel and lithium cell or two and maybe, the bucket can be set to generate a wakeup/interrupt, once it tips and the 8266, can maybe otherwise wake up once an hour and report that it hasn't been stolen/affirmatively relocated and tell you the state of battery level etc.

I guess for making up the tipping bucket you'd probably need to 3d print some parts...

The regular conical rain gauge is a problem, 3 years and they turn to dust, here... lots of UV and other emission from above in general...