Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “DIY Hacks & How To’s: Snow Scale”.
When they measure snowfall, they usually just measure its depth, but there are other important factors to consider. For instance, if you have to shovel snow, then you care about the weight of the snow as well. So today, i’m going to show you how to make a simple snow, weighing scale to add to your diy home weather station. For this project you need a small digital scale. Ideally, you want a scale that doesn’t automatically zero itself every time. You turn it on start by opening up the housing of the scale to see how everything is laid out inside a digital scale. You’Ll find two main parts: there’s a load cell that senses the weight of an object. This is typically a thick metal bar with a sensor on the side that measures how much the bar deforms when a load is applied. There’S also an external circuit that processes this data and displays the weight on an lcd screen.
In order to be able to monitor the circuit remotely, we need to separate the load cell from the monitoring circuit to do this unscrew each one from the housing then disconnect the load cell cable from the circuit board. Now you need to mount the two parts into separate housings in this case. The easiest way to do this was to just cut the original housing in half the load cell on the circuit board were then remounted in their original positions. To reconnect them. I used a 10 foot, long, cable with header connectors on each end. At this point, you should test the system to make sure that everything is still working properly after cutting the housing. Each section is open on one side to seal the opening. I traced the outline onto a sheet of clear plastic.
Then i cut it out and attached it to the opening with hot glue. The last thing that i did was add a plastic bowl to help catch the snow. I drilled small holes on the bottom to drain out melted snow. Then i glued the bowl to the plate to set up the system.
I put the display in my kitchen window and placed the scale several feet out into the yard. If you’d rather not set the scale on the ground, you can also suspend it from a plant hanger. If you don’t want to use the original monitoring circuit, you can also use an arduino. An arduino gives you a few more options as to how you track the snowfall, but that’s a whole other project.
Well, that’s how to make a simple scale for measuring the weight of snowfall in your yard, thanks for watching and check back soon for more diy hacks and how to’s .