An Arduino-based plasmonic sensor to detect rain and its analysis

A novel low-cost rain sensor based on a Surface Plasmonic Resonance (SPR) platform has been designed, realized, and tested. The SPR platform has been used to detect the presence of rain by using a simple setup exploiting an LED, a photodiode, and an Arduino microcontroller. The SPR sensor is placed into a specially designed 3D-printed holder to permit rainwater flow upon the sensitive region. Two studies have been carried out to test the sensor system in terms of sensitivity, which resulted equal to 0.057 mV/μ1, and set a threshold to avoid false alarm events.