Abstract

From time immemorial man has used the sun to dry many things, a process known as sun drying. Sun drying is carried out in the farm, home, industry, laboratory, hospitals and other institution for a number of reasons. These reasons include totally driving out water molecules from the things being dried like clothes, some farm produce, during building work, industries where certain plants used for pharmaceutical/chemical purpose are exposed to direct sunlight for a little while to cause some chemical changes in them and at home when windows are opened to allow the sun rays to fall into rooms to eliminate dampness and allow for proper aeration. When rain falls, it will cause a setback to all the reasons for sun-drying enumerated above, especially when the materials being sun dried are not retrieved quickly. Thus, designing and constructing a device which gives one a heads-up the instant it starts to rain or serves an indicator as to whether rain will fall or not hopefully giving enough time to retrieve the materials being sun dried is a welcome idea. In this work, the designed and constructed rain detector with an alarm system using an Atmega 328p microcontroller chip was programmed using the arduino board. The constructed system has an alarm system and light Emitting Diode which buzzes and blinks immediately it starts to rain and a Liquid Crystal Display (LCD) which displays the intensity of the rain. The obtained experimental results showed changes in sensor reading to different Weather conditions; such as, for no rain, drizzle and heavy rainfall, respectively.