Implementing a snow depth measurement sensor for the IoT

The Internet of Things (IoT) is an infrastructure for connecting a broad range of devices to the Internet and other IoT-ready devices. Data accumulated by IoT devices can benefit users by analyzing these data using artificial intelligence techniques. Therefore, the IoT and IoT-ready devices can improve the quality of life of users within a smart city, a next-generation city also designed to decrease energy consumption. In snow-covered areas within such a smart city, measuring snow depth is important, but conventional techniques for measuring snow depth are unsuitable for the IoT because devices would need to be placed at numerous survey spots and conventional commercial devices are usually ultrasonic or laser-based, which are extremely expensive for IoT applications. Considering these limitations, we propose a novel IoT device to measure snow depth using inexpensive sensors, including temperature/humidity, illuminance, and electrical conductivity (EC) sensors. To the best of our knowledge, this study is the first report on devices that measure snow depth electrically. As first reports of electrically snow detection, we reported detecting snow by investigating the reduction of electric resistance in EC sensor output values. In fabricated IoT devices, we are able to measure snow depth by multiple placed low-cost EC sensors along the vertical direction. The unit cost of a fabricated device is $65, approximately 1/30 and 1/66 cheaper than that of conventional ultrasonic and laser-based devices, respectively. © 2019 The Institute of Electrical Engineers of Japan.