Ray, I heart you. I guess the reason I’d love to see it passed off to the safety device is that there is quite a few weather stations these days if you live even remotely in suburbia. If you could designate a few of them, it would work just fine for automation. Very rarely is it raining somewhere else in my town that I shouldn’t probably be thinking about close the roof.
Chris
Chris, can the hub pass that information over to the safety device and allow us to pick the information we want to use for it?
Chris (mads001),
Rain rides with the front passing, and if it comes over you even two minutes before it hits the station you are dialed into you are going to have wet equipment. The real safety issue - rain - should be very, very local, like within 25m of the observatory.
/p
Per, I fly airplanes too (big ones, for the USAF). I’m good on meteorology.
You’re right that if it rains in one place, that doesn’t necessarily mean it will rain somewhere else. However, in my case, I know that if it rains in one town, I have a pretty good chance of it raining in my town. I get it, it’s a cost thing, but I’m pretty sure there is quite a few people who would be happy basing the weather on the wunderground forecast and using it on a safety device. Also, this allows you to use other weather stations such as a Vantage Pro or other professional stations that can’t necessarily feed directly into astro software (because they don’t output a Boltwood2) but can tie into wunderground.
Again, it’s always what the user is willing to risk. The cost of a weather station varies from about $3-500 US to $2k US. My guess is, there are quite a few people with simple ROR who would love to use their weather underground profile and trust it.
Chris, I agree in principle, but if it starts pouring down on your obsy ten minutes before it hits the station location, you would cry rivers 
I had the pleasure of riding a C-17 from Christchruch to McMurdo in 2010. Great stuff! I only do rotary myself.
We need to design a $99 rain sensor that can be trusted, and it should preferably have an IR temp for cloud cover as well…
Let’s try a Fermi estimate of what it would cost, assume 10 GBP, USD or EUR per item:
That comes to 70.
That doesn’t leave much of the $99 budget to be spent on design and development.
The AAG Cloudwatcher at 300 EUR (+VAT) may well be what this sot of thing costs to make well.
I can make one for myself for considerably less - as long as I ignore my time - but that’s nothing like a professionally made and guaranteed unit.
Chris
I got a waterproof rain sensor that is hooked to a buzzer alarm at my home some distance away from the observatory. It is very sensitive. It triggers with the tiniest of splashes. It is also heated as to prevent dew forming and triggering false alarms. I wonder if SGP could be modified to intercept a trigger from this device.
The rain sensor I got is a
KEMO M152 Rain sensor 12V
Regards,
Stephen
You should see a B-1, I think you’d like it :).
And, I agree completely. No fuss no muss. TBH, the SGL (SQL?) guys have a good design. The problem is it branched too many times and is hard to follow. Theirs is arduino based. If I remember correctly, they had it under $100 bucks for the parts and their ASCOM driver was free.
If you’re just looking for a rain detector, this is essentially what Foster Systems uses with a custom IC:
http://rainsensors.com/
It works really well and is sturdy. I know DSW uses them in conjunction with other weather stations. If you could wire it to a ardunio in a waterproof case along, I think you’d be under $150. And ultimately, rain is the only thing that’s going to wreck your equipment.
Chris
I’m going to start looking at this. Cloud is the difficult part where you have to weigh ambient temperature against the measured sky temperature and do some maths. There is, however, a roof controller in the pipe as well… Need to prioritize.
I’ll get you a nice ride in an EC-120 if you come by, and you can take me for a spin in the B-1 when I visit the US next time 
/per
I bet your low level routes are better than mine 
That would be really neat Per. I wish I had your tech skills! I can build things though; if you need someone to test stuff I’m glad to help.
Take care,
Chris
That sensor simply has a relay close when it rains and that may be a bit difficult to connect to a PC. Easy with a microcontroller but then you may as well use a rain sensor such as this one
That’s the one in the AAG CloudWatcher.
Chris
I bought a Hydreon RG11 sensor - it works on the same principal as automative auto wipers. It detects rain droplets and can be programmed in all sorts of ways. I tried mine out and have it set so that after two droplets on a 3" dome, it turns a relay on. I have the relay turning off after 15 minutes of no further rain. I programmed my roof system so as soon as it detects rain, it parks the mount and closes the roof under 30 seconds.
I’m just building the sensor array bracket to go with the ROR. It is in full view of the kitchen window, so I have had to take extra steps in joinery to make it look artistic and blend in. (I want to make it to my pearl wedding anniversary.)
Yes Chris - thanks for reminding me - I was vaguely aware of that. For info, the OPTEC hub covers most device types and they will soon add observing conditions too. That can be useful for me since I sometimes switch between apps to do focusing with a goldfocus mask with TSX and then switch back to SGP for imaging.