Umbrella that gives you rain data via smart phone!

London: 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.