Design and Implementation of a Novel Automated Snow Depth Sensing System

Amar Nath Prajapati, Roop Pahuja
2016 Journal of Sensors and Instrumentation  
Accurate and automated snowfall measurement is a major challenge in different environmental conditions. Minimization of environmental effects is essential for accurate measurement of snowfall. It is required to get reliable information about the snow depth for true weather report and better forecasting of snowfall. Automation of snowfall measurement is also necessary to remove the human error, to get repeated information about the snow depth, continuous measurement of snow depth and
more » ... sly storage of measured data. The first phase of this paper addresses design and implementation of an encoder based electromechanical snow depth sensor to enhance accuracy and resolution of snow depth measurement. It works as a standalone-embedded device with intelligent functions. Additionally, a dedicated virtual instrument for the sensing device is developed to provide easy connectivity with PC for online snow depth measurement. The second phase grapples with measurement of snowfall in the different climate conditions in which ultrasonic snow depth sensor faces large variability. The results of measured snow depth with prototype of proposed sensor are presented which are comparable with direct and standard measurement method of snow depth and indicate higher level of accuracy.
doi:10.7726/jsi.2016.1001 fatcat:5ldiq6zikraujbftdgyknlomeq