Though rains are still some days away, buying this umbrella that can collect rain data won't be a bad idea.
A Danish researcher has built a prototype umbrella that has a sensor.
It detects raindrops falling on its canvas and uses bluetooth to send this information via a phone to a computer, a BBC report said.
"We have radar and satellites, but we are not measuring rain on the ground as we used to; it's expensive to maintain the gauges," Rolf Hut from Delft University of Technology in The Netherlands was quoted as saying.
How does this 'smart' umbrella work?
A sensor kept under the canvas measures the vibrations caused by falling raindrops.
This is wired into a mobile-phone Bluetooth earpiece that sends information into an app.
The smart phone then links all its data over the cell network to a laptop.
"The moment you open the umbrella under rains, it would start sending data to your phone which uploads it to the cloud," Hut was quoted as saying.
