Is it cold in here?

This is a common question in my house and I assume others too. Is there a system to track temperatures in multiple rooms? Cheaply? Free?

Nagios (http://www.nagios.org/) is pretty good a graphing it out over time but I can't think of paths to get the data from sensors into it. USB temperature sensors are cheap but limited to short distances so not helpful across a mid size house. I have lots of Cat-5 run but putting an Arduino in each room gets pricey. Adding in moisture sensors would be nice as then Nagios can be used to alert on thresholds. (Water sensed. Temp over/under 20 degrees. etc.)

Thoughts?
Sounds like a great Ben Heck show project!

0 Catwell over 13 years ago

Wireless sensors are abundant. They connect to a central computer, usually through the internet.

In some cases, everything could be handled by the remote processing company. Then all you have to do is check your smartphone or tablet for all the room's reading.

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0 e14 Contributor over 13 years ago

arduino + nRF24L01 + thermister = $5-7 per room. Im not sure you could do much better than that.

Ive been poking around trying to find a cheap wireless module for my home automation project and it seems like the nRF24L01 is a pretty decent choice. Its not 802.11 but it can be had for as little as $1 on ebay and as an added bonus its got a page on the arduino site so setup should be pretty easy.
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0 e14 Contributor over 13 years ago

you will want to be careful where you place your sensors I would make sure hey are on an interior wall about 48 inches off the floor. other wise you will get scewed readings.
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0 Workshopshed over 13 years ago

You could look at the Nanode which uses daughter boards to communicate sensors back to a controlling arduino clone with an ethernet port. I'm sure there are other systems that work on a similar principle

I've a need for a multisensor temperature / humidity setup so I'm looking at the DHT11 which use a single wire (plus power) digital signal. I've not worked out the range though as I only want to run them a few metres from each other, hooked up to a central box.
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0 Workshopshed over 13 years ago in reply to Workshopshed

Here's something should help, another vote for the nRF24L01 that Robert suggested a few days back

http://www.adafruit.com/blog/2013/01/28/designing-a-remote-module-for-diy-home-automation/
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