SUTRON SDI-12 Tipping Bucket Interface with Internal Backup Power

The Sutron SDI-12 Tipping Bucket Interface (SDI-TB) is a compact SDI‐12 rain gauge sensor used to compute precipitation measurement and enhance existing tipping buckets with integrated “smart” features. The SDI-TB is water-resistant, low power consumption, and eliminates the need for long wires from the tipping bucket to the SDI data logger. With various features like a real time clock, programmable daily rainfall reset time, and automatically updated annual accumulations, the SDI-TB can be programmed to compensate for precipitation loss due to heavy rainfall rates. Through the use of correction polynomial coefficients, which factor bucket size and the time between current and previous tips, the SDI-TB converts the equivalent rainfall from inches/hour to rainfall per tip, counteracting instances of rapid, heavy rainfall. Drawing just 100µA, the SDI-TB is a low energy consumption sensor that can self sustain in the event of power loss. A rechargeable internal power source sees that all crucial functions of the SDI-TB, like rainfall measurement and internal clock synchronicity, remain operational for up to 10 hours without SDI-12 power.