AcuRiteWireless Digital Rain Gauge with Self-Emptying Collector with Rainfall History, Alerts, and Current Date and Time (00899), Multicolor

High winds blew it off the table once. I put some pebbles (for weight) in a small flower pot and put the gauge in the pot. Very secure now. It was easy to set up. Mostly just required installing batteries. Works very well.It’s rather ingenious. There is a cup at the top with a hole in the bottom. Underneath the hole is a little teeter totter mechanism with a small bucket on each end. The bucket in the up position is under the hole. In the down position it’s tilted to empty the bucket. So rain water is collected in the cup and runs through the hole into the bucket. When the bucket is full, the water weight tips the teeter and then that water is dumped out the bottom. It knows how much water has passed through by how many times the teeter has tipped. It reports the rain data to the display in the house. You never need to empty it. It reports rain data by the event or by the day. It retains a history of the data. To explain the difference between event and day, let’s say it starts raining at 9PM one evening. If you display data by the day, it switches to zero at midnight. Let’s say you got .8 inches up to midnight and .4 inches more before the rain stops at 2AM. The next morning you come to check out how much rain you got. If you select event, it says 1.2 inches. If you select day, it says .4 today. Press the history button and see you got .8 yesterday. It also has an optional alarm to tell you a rain event has started in case you want to close your car windows.I imagine you will need to clean it once in a while. The batteries last a long time, but you will need to change them occasionally. Much less maintenance than a manually dumped tube and it still works if you forget to dump the tube. Easy to see how much rain for the week or month by going through history. Better than trying to keep written records of readings on a tube.Update - I just bought my second AcuRite rain gauge. I didn't read the manual closely enough or forgot what I read and left the rain gauge out all winter. It says to not leave it out in freezing weather. So it was working earlier this spring, but stopped about a month ago. I figured it must be the batteries. So I opened up the outside unit and replaced the batteries. It wouldn't sync with the inside unit. So I opened up the outside unit again to see if maybe I put a battery in backwards. I noticed a little crack underneath the teeter mechanism. Well guess where the electronics are. With the spring rains, some moisture must have got through the crack and toasted it. I won't make that mistake again. This is a really great little machine. I never have to empty it or keep a manual log to see the history. Just have to remember to bring it in, like hoses before the first freeze. I did turn off the rain alarm. It's kinda loud at 2AM.

Nice setup that does as advertised.

I have yet to find a digital/wireless/self-emptying rain gauge that qualifies as being 100% accurate. The ones I've tried have generally been lucky to be +/1 10% compared to a high-precision accumulator gauge like the Stratus.Having said that, I like the AccuRite gauges. I've probably had half a dozen now. They aren't always the most accurate, though. Yes, they display data to two decimal places but, when placed next to a precision accumulator gauge, they can easily be 10% off. And they're inconsistent. I've had some that were within 2%, and others that were lucky to hit that 10% mark. Many have had great battery life, but a couple have been power hogs and have needed new batteries far more often than was reasonable.Still, they are inexpensive, they're easy to install and set up, and they're very user-friendly. I very much like their display options, which are basic and easy. "Event" means a storm that has contributed without a pause of more than 8 hours. Day, week, and month are self-evident.My biggest gripe with them is the same as I'd have with many other self-emptying gauges in this class: the bottoms of the gauges are open, and they are a VERY inviting habitat to various spiders, wasps, and other creatures who are looking for a sheltered place in which to build their homes. So, before any upcoming rain event, you need to inspect your gauges and be prepared to issue eviction notices and clean out thick, sticky webs and other things that will prevent the rocker mechanism from working.They do offer a means of calibration, but I have yet to find a tool that can do it without knocking the rocker off its mounting pin -- and those tiny pins can't be replaced if you lose them. I've tried, with a wide variety of watch band pins (which are nearly the same size). You need a super-short right-angle Phillips-head screwdriver to do the job. Please let me know if you've found one that fits.It would also be nice if they gave rainfall rate. I live in an area that is prone to floods and debris flows, and rainfall rate is a key component to that situation.Finally, I have found these to be somewhat inconsistent. I have one AccuRite gauge that was within 2% of its adjacent accumulator gauge during our last, relatively calm, rain storm. Another, in the same storm, when compared to its accumulator partner, was nearly 11% off. And, while most of the AccuRite units I've had are pretty good battery-wise, I have had one that devoured batteries at an alarming rate compared to its siblings.Yes, that all does sound rather negative, but for some crazy reason I like these gauges. I'd rate them at 3.5 overall, but for the cost I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt and round that up to a 4.0. For the price, as long as you're not really expecting them to give you the exact rainfall within 0.01 inch, they're pretty good.