Easy to use Household Temperature Monitor? 106
Jim Carroll asks: "I awoke this morning to a gas furnace that conked out. The house was 60F. We had to turn the switch off and on to get it working again. Fair enough -- but I'm worried about it going off when I'm travelling and having the pipes freeze. I'm looking for an inexpensive, simple to use temperature monitor/sensor that would plug into a USB port, that would then log household temperature to a server, so that I can view it through my broadband connection while travelling. Sure, there are all kinds of complex X10 solutions; there seems to be a few kits out there; and some high end industrial applications, but these all involve spending a few hundred dollars. I want simple, straightforward, cheap -- plug it in, and it dumps the temp every few minutes to a file. But there doesn't seem to be anything that is simple, $10-20, that is consumer oriented? And if not, why aren't companies yet making this type of device?"
Cookies, beer, and a trinket (Score:4, Insightful)
Also, keep in mind that 60 degrees farenheit is pretty far from freezing and that the inside of your house is unlikely to reach the temperatures required to freeze the pipes *inside* your home.
Re:Cookies, beer, and a trinket (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Cookies, beer, and a trinket (Score:2)
Re:Cookies, beer, and a trinket (Score:1)
Re:Cookies, beer, and a trinket (Score:2)
Re:Cookies, beer, and a trinket (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Cookies, beer, and a trinket (Score:2)
Thermometer + Webcam.
If you use a digital thermometer, throw in some OCR software so you can add some automation.
Re:Cookies, beer, and a trinket (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Cookies, beer, and a trinket (Score:4, Insightful)
Agreed. 60 degrees Fahrenheit is pretty warm for the inside of a house at night during winter. Even my folks, in their 70s, keep their thermostat at 60 at night.
It's not uncommon that it's in the 50s in my house when I've been lazy with burning wood and it's under 30 outside...and I've slept a few hours too long. Lazy me.
Your pipes aren't likely to freeze until it's well below freezing if you keep your cold water dripping - I see 20s outside and high 40s inside before I need to start letting the water drip in the kitchen, which is the longest run of my water piping.
Now when the power goes out, and your pump stops pumping, then you'd better be home to drain your plumbing before it freezes.
Re:Cookies, beer, and a trinket (Score:4, Insightful)
If your furnace goes off, the thermostat isn't involved, and your house will certainly get cold fast. If it is freezing outside, it WILL get freezing inside. And since the water and heat pipes are in the walls, they will get colder faster than the inside of the house itself (if they are in the exterior walls, that is).
And since it can get pretty damn cold at night, your neighbor would have to move in, and stay awake all the time to provide effective monitoring.
Re:Cookies, beer, and a trinket (Score:2)
Re:Cookies, beer, and a trinket (Score:2)
(btw, lesson #3 is "when doing electrical work, where rubber-soled shoes, and keep one hand in your pocket.")
Re:Cookies, beer, and a trinket (Score:1)
No, but seriously (Score:1)
A general-purpose "home interface" would be useful for all kinds of things if it were sufficiently easy to use. One workable design for such a system would be as a network of cheap boxes that could be set up in each room and networked with 1
Re:No, but seriously (Score:1)
Mister House [sourceforge.net]
Re:Cookies, beer, and a trinket (Score:1, Informative)
Depending on your house, the pipes *inside* your house may be more likely to freeze. The outside ones *should* be buried far enough below the frost line. I lived in an older house that had been retrofitted for indoor plumbing. It had a bathroom the size of a bedroom because, surprise, it used to *be* a bedroom!
Re:Cookies, beer, and a trinket (Score:2)
Re:Cookies, beer, and a trinket (Score:3, Insightful)
If he lives in northern U.S, in the Rockies, in Alaska, or any number of places outside the U.S., it is very reasonable to assume that your furnace not working for a day or two will cause your pipes to freeze.
Re:Cookies, beer, and a trinket (Score:1)
Re:Cookies, beer, and a trinket (Score:1, Informative)
Indeed.
I recently had a house for sale in Salt Lake City. I still had the utilities on so I could use the place while fixing things, etc. I left the thermostat at 42F, figuring that a 10-degree buffer from the freezing point would be sufficient. It worked like a charm, in spite of several hard freezes before th
Re:Cookies, beer, and a trinket (Score:2)
I learned the hard way this happens the first year I was here, with about 4 leaks showing up that winter. Luckily they were pinhole or small crack, but still... Oh, and btw, it pays to have a cat. My first
Use the internal temp monitor in your PC (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Use the internal temp monitor in your PC (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Use the internal temp monitor in your PC (Score:2)
Dallas Semiconductor (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Dallas Semiconductor (Score:3, Informative)
Build One? (Score:4, Interesting)
This site [sm6rpz.se] has schematics and the pros and cons of various sensors.
Re:Build One? (Score:1)
It's just a thermistor (thermally sensative resistor, looks like two thin wires with a small red ball of plastic like substance in the middle) connected to an circuit that converts the current reading to a frequency, the frequency is then read by whatever the brains of the project are (usually a lame-ass PLC (like Idec's MicroSmart line) or soon a customised EtherNut). I'm sure you could also plug it into a parall
Or... (Score:4, Informative)
Or, have a neighbor pop over and check once a day.
Re:Or... (Score:2)
Just a Thought (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Just a Thought (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Just a Thought (Score:2)
I'm just afraid the "outside air" would be too locally warmed.
space heater (Score:5, Insightful)
OK, you have a module plugged into your USB port providing temperature to the computer. Oops, the computer has crashed - now who takes care of the problem?
OK, the computer has rebooted, and sees that it is too cold in the house - the furnace has failed. OK, so now what does the computer do - start crunching SETI@Home packets to heat the place?
OK, the computer emails you. The email goes out, and then the computer picks it up and throws it into your mail queue.
OK, you don't have the computer getting your email - you get it via Webmail. So, your computer is in Ohio, and you are in Hawai'i. Now, what do YOU do about the furnace?
There is already a solution to the problem of keeping your pipes from freezing - it is called an electric space heater. Set it to 45 degrees. Place it in the basement away from any flammable items. If the furnace fails, the heater will automatically keep things from freezing.
Sure, a long term power outage will prevent this from working. Guess what - it would also prevent your computer from working. Yes, a UPS will keep the machine running for a while - how many minutes?
The other solution is even more ingenious - it is called "a neighbor".
Lastly, if you WANT temperature monitoring for your computer - look at Dallas Semiconductor's One Wire system. They have cheap sensors that will report the temperature over 1 wire - a little programming on the parallel port and you can read them.
But really, try the simpler solutions first. They will work better.
Re:space heater (Score:2)
I don't think we are talking about letting Microsoft Windows handle this
This scenario is more likely though:
OK, you plugged an USB cable in, the computer crashed, who is now going to cook?
Linux is the way to go for crazy projects, just don't forget to pay SCO the $699 fee or you'll be in trouble.
Re:space heater (Score:3, Insightful)
My ups ran my fridge for three days in the summer, there is no reason i can think of that it cant handle my computer for a week.
Re:space heater (Score:3, Interesting)
You never have used a UPS have you? You aren't going to have a UPS that will run your PC for 5-7 days. Well...let me rephrase that. You aren't going to run a regular desktop PC for 5-7 days without spending several thousand dollars on a UPS and batteries. To keep my little OptiPlex GX150 running without my monitor, I'd need one of these [apc.com] and two of these [apc.com] for a little over $2,0
Re:space heater (Score:2)
Re:space heater (Score:2)
Ever heard of redundancy? Wouldn't it be nice not to rely on only 1 process working? Neighbors get bored visiting a house daily, so maybe they change to weekly visits and 6 days go by before they notice anything. Maybe there is a 2 foot snow storm, and they simple cannot visit the house. Maybe they get sick and go to the hospital. Maybe they win the lottery and go to Tahiti. These are similar to all the objections you had for the OP'
Re:space heater (Score:2)
Why not? (Score:1, Flamebait)
2) you couldnt hope to get something like this without spending lots of money (well more than $10)
3) if you have any EE experiance or even PIC programming experiance, you could whip one up yourself using some schematics found here, http://www.commlinx.com.au/schematics.htm [commlinx.com.au] and learn some basic RS-232 programming, then get yourself a serial to USB converter [dontronics.com] (around 40$) or just use the standard serial port instead.
Re:Why not? (Score:1)
Re:Why not? (Score:2)
There are a lot of Pic and AVR USB parts available right now. Just use one of those and make it an HID and a little programming and you are all set. You could make it USB powered with a batte
Re:Why not? (Score:1)
Just hook a thermistor (a resistor that changes resistance with heat) up to it and read from the joystick port.
PICs suck.
Re:Why not? (Score:2)
If your doing it under windows you might be ok with the joystick routines, but they may not poll fast enough to get a good resolution. You would be better off putting together a simple circuit to toggle a couple of transistors instead. Even if it setup as an alarm (below X temperature). Then you can poll the button lines instead of the analog, and the poll loop doesn't have to be tight.
But, since he isn't looking for accura
sump pump (Score:5, Interesting)
Anyway, he then connected it via a db-9 serial port, and wrote a
Which read as either 0 or 1, depending upon weather the sump pump was on or not. Then on his webserver, he wrote some cgi to retrieve
here is the orriginal article [linuxjournal.com]
-kyle
K.I.S.S. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:K.I.S.S. (Score:3, Informative)
simple (Score:5, Interesting)
step 2: buy a webcam
step 3: place the temperature display in a well lit area and point the webcam at it.
Re:simple (Score:2)
step 2: buy a webcam
step 3: place the temperature display in a well lit area and point the webcam at it.
Ah yes, the old optical coupling trick..
Right tool for the job. (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't know of a USB solution, but what about a USB game port (do such things exist)? Surely they wouldn't be very expensive.
Very useful (Score:2, Offtopic)
So you find out your pipes are in the process of freezing, but havent frozen yet. You're in Japan. what you gonna do?
Re:Very useful (Score:1)
maybe you shouldn't post so early in the morning. :P
Re:Very useful (Score:1)
Try this do-dad (Score:4, Insightful)
$25 data logger, analog & digital inputs. Use an RTD for temp.
Dataq DI-194 (Score:2)
The DI-194 is a nice and cheap device that they used to give away for free, and offers simple 4-channels of analogue input over RS-232. It uses an intentionally obscure protocol to talk over the serial port, so you'll be needing the Dataq DI-194 Linux driver [anl.gov]. I've been trying to contact the author (I'm working on Python [python.org] bindings for this driver) for a few weeks and had no luck, so don't expect to get help from him.
Fixing the symptom? (Score:1, Insightful)
Monitoring the temperature so that you can tell if it failed is only fixing the symptom of the problem, not the problem itself (which is an unreliable furnace).
Weather Station? (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:alarm system (Score:1)
$40.00 a month is cheap? I use a local company which has me patched directly into a panel at the local police dispatch and fire station. I pay $90.00 a year and because there is no third party, I get actual police response when my alarm signals.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:alarm system (Score:2)
Really? I'm surprised. I moved out of SW Minneapolis recently and I used Brink's ($29.91/mo for 3 doors and an internal motion sensor). I had one false entry alarm probably caused by me taking too long to
You probably already have a solution. (Score:4, Insightful)
Got a thermometer?
Re:You probably already have a solution. (Score:1)
Use the motherboard's monitoring ability (Score:3, Informative)
Step 1: Define the problem. (Score:2)
Ultimately, it would probably be most accurate to AND the following logic states: is the temperature below 50 degrees? Is the furnace off? However, one could assume that the temperature will never get below 55 degrees if the furnace is on, so we're left with a device that can determine when the temperature is below 50 degrees.
PIC + Thermister + Parallel Port (Score:2)
If you want to get really fancy you could try using the serial port or the USB port.
60 ?? (Score:2, Funny)
Re:60 ?? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:60 ?? (Score:2)
Keep it simple and go to the hardware store. (Score:4, Insightful)
Pipe cords are like an electric blanket for pipes. They get plugged into a standard wall socket and have a built in thermostat to keep the pipes from freezing. Put these in your bathrooms, kitchen sink and basement and you'll be fine. They run about $10.
Also leave a couple of faucets dripping slightly.
If you are leaving your home for more than a week, ask a friend or neighbor to drop by and check things out.
I've been looking too (Score:2)
*) the items I have found are quite expensive -- $300+ for even the low end stuff.
or
*) it requires a wire be run all the way from the PC to where you want to monitor. This may or may not be easy depending on the house and whether or not you rent v. own. These are still in the $100+ range.
Well, (Score:2)
http://www.sensatronics.com/TempTrax/ [sensatronics.com]
http://www.netbotz.com/products/wall.html [netbotz.com]
You want a Sensaphone (Score:2)
I've used Sensaphones to monitor remote computer rooms. It has alarm input contacts on it so you can connect water sensors and such. It calls a list of phone numbers when triggered by an alarm or low/high temperature and gives the problem and status to you in a voice announcement.
There are other [omega.com] similar slef-contained alarm dialer solutions
Re:You want a Sensaphone (Score:1)
Household Climate System (Score:2)
I want to place a temp sensor in each room in my home, and interconnect them so I can get the temp. from each room in the house. This way I can see the disparity and why the room with the TV gets up to 80 degrees or more and other rooms are in the 60's.
I want to build a network of temp sensors (need to be somewhat inexpensive, as i need probally 20 or more of them) and in-line duct fans [blowerwheel.com] and "cold air return" blowers
Re:Household Climate System (Score:2)
It's actuall 1 signal wire, and ground, but you connect multiple devices on the same circuit, they are connected in parallel.
DS18S20 - Temperature range: -40C to +85C. (0 is freezing, and 20 is about average room temperaure) $2.57/each. $2.28/each for 25+, etc
These particular ones can run with parasitic power, but they have many other options, with various temperature ranges, pricing and pinouts.
If you really want to be cool you can buy a T
pipe wrap (Score:2)
http://www.homedepot.com/prel80/HDUS/EN_US/diy_
Re:pipe wrap (Score:3, Informative)
USB based temp sensor board = $35 (Score:3, Informative)
DLP-TEMP 2-Channel Temperature Acquisition Board [dlpdesign.com]
They provide C++ and VB Code examples. Pretty simple stuff, apparently this will show up as a COM port. The VB code is funny, it has all the c++ code in it commented out and you can see their porting thought process.
good luck
A more complete solution (Score:2)
Your neighbors are the *best* solution. A gadget solution would be one that would shut off the water and leave it off in the event of a power failure or freezing temperatures.
It should be overridable, of course. But if the power failed (or the temp dropped), the water would stop flowing in from the meter. This would almost completely eliminate the damage if the pipes did freeze. It's not the burst pipes that's the problem -- it's al
Re:A more complete solution (Score:2)
(I don't know what would happen to a house if the water was turned off for a week or two... i imagine nothing, so long as you remember to turn off the water heater, and to turn everything back on when you get back)
How about a weather duck? (Score:2)
Monitors Temperature, Humidity, Air Flow, Light Level, Door open/closed (I/O ports) internally plus it has a bunch of external sensors you can hook up to it.
Even says:
"With the supplied software, you can receive e-mail alerts or be paged when temperature or any of the other values is exceeded. View the data on the web. Log in Excel spreadsheets. Add a $40 Web Cam and the so
Blue Screen of Frost? (Score:1)
You're living in the MS House of the Future, today!
Powerware Has An Environmental Monitor (Score:2)
Have a look-see [powerware.com]. You can get it for less than $100 [cdw.com] from CDW.
It's not exactly what you're looking for but.... (Score:1)
This works great - (Score:2)
http://www.quasarelectronics.com/3145data.htm [quasarelectronics.com]
It's serial, but I'm fairly certain it would work with a USB-Serial converter. Also, it allows you to use up to 4 sensors and you can locate where you'd like (Dallas Semiconductor DS1820 3 wire chips).
They also have linux drivers, sample code, etc.
Wrong... (Score:1)
Uh... have the thermocouple replaced (Score:2)
--Mike--
The device you are looking for is a housesitter (Score:2)
(a) put a web cam pointed at a thermometer (duh)
(b) hire someone to check on your house regularly
It's not like it is your single most expensive investment in your life!!
Hey why bother paying someone $10/day to check in on things?! (duh)
Why so fancy? (Score:2)
A simple thermometer connecting to joystick port (Score:1)
It's working fine, relax. (Score:1)
should. Maybe if the temperature were _less_ than room temperature, you might
start to get concerned, but 60 is the highest you would ever want it to be
(unless you're running a nursing home full of little old ladies who eat like
birds and so get the shivers if the room drops below body temperature). We
set our air conditioner lower than that in the summer.
Use a Hobo Boxcar monitor from Onset (Score:1)
Here is the description from the web site:
here you go (Score:2)
free solution (Score:2)
2. Wire it to a serial or parallel port.
3. Write a daemon that watches for contact closure.
4. Upon contact closure, action of your choice takes place.
just the ticket (Score:1)