A while ago, I posted an instruction sheet for temperature sensing with the waterproof DS18B20 probe. At the time, I was really interested in how quickly my coffee would cool off depending on the kind of cup I was using.
The program I used involved a gspread library for a python program. My problem was that I had an easy time getting temperatures, but I had a hard time getting them into some kind of file where I could save them and do some work later. Finding gspread was excellent, because it did two things for me. First, it saved my temperatures into a Google Spreadsheet that I could access from anywhere in the world. That was very handy. Second, it gave me the confidence that the probe was actually working. If I checked and saw a recent temperature, I knew things were working.
My problem, as I knew (and pointed out by @Charles Turner) if the program ever hung up, an infinite loop would take over, and that would be the end of the temperature sensing and logging.
It was recommended that I made the program something that would execute just once, and then have crontab make it a repetitive action. So now, my program executes every two minutes, and logs a temperature into my Google Spreadsheet. I have been using it to monitor the temperature in my classroom, and I have posted it to our class website (Mike Davis Chemistry).
I will do a more detailed blog post and set of instructions very soon. In the meantime, I was just so pleased with how well this worked, that I wanted to share it. I also wanted to thank the community for helping me get over a problem.
Check out the temperature of room 3831 at Truman College here. (https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1mccAri0TsLIVCXKzzrx8lxO7JXAAdm6i6FmboO75wjE/edit?usp=sharing) or follow it here.
