Monitoring Temperatures in my house through HouseBot

joedornan · Post by **joedornan** » Sat Nov 26, 2005 1:14 pm

Hi folks,

I looked around and couldn't figure out if it is even possible to do this, so I'm asking the collective wisdom of the group:

can I use housebot to monitor the temperatures in four separate locations in my house? Using wireless temperature sensors would be ideal, but I'll settle for any sensor that can be read and tracked on my PC.

It would be nice to be able to log the temps over time, but first things first: is it even possible see this kind of data on my PC?

Look forward to your advice!

-Joe

Post by **Richard Naninck** » Sat Nov 26, 2005 3:06 pm

Yes, this is possible since I have 3 temp sensors up and running and logging in a theme. One of them is used for my HVAC (Livingroom temp), one of them is used to control the fan in my AV cabinet to keep the temperature under control and the other one just tells me the outside air temp. The tempsensors I use are: SMT 160-30 from http://www.smartec.nl

They are digital sensors and I connected them using a micro controller. This is not the right place to go into technical details since there is a (very) lot to setup and build before this works, but to answer your question: Yes it can be done!

PT · Post by PT » Sun Nov 27, 2005 4:22 am

Hi Richard

I have looked at the web page for the smartec items and have sent an email pending an order. What method do you use to get the info into the theme. I am looking at the SMTAS08 controller

maze42 · Post by **maze42** » Sun Nov 27, 2005 7:02 am

I´m using 1-wire temp sensors from Dallas (DS1820) to monitor the temperature in my house. At the moment I have 15 of them connected to a 1-wire to RS232 converter from PointSix. I am also using PointSix software (came toghether with the converter). This is a DDE server so I had to write some code (in VB) to conncect the DDE "tags" with housebot devices using ExternalComControl. It works nice but this solution require some coding every time I want to add a new sensor or change any name of properties or devices. It would be nice to have a HouseBot device that could connect directly to the converter.

Post by **Richard Naninck** » Sun Nov 27, 2005 8:33 am

PT wrote:Hi Richard

I have looked at the web page for the smartec items and have sent an email pending an order. What method do you use to get the info into the theme. I am looking at the SMTAS08 controller

My tempsensor is connected to an AVR 2313 micro controller. It samples the sensor about 60000 times to get a good reading. The mc is connected to HouseBot using the Generic Serial Device. Upon request, the mc gives me a 4 byte hex acsii string which I then convert to degrees C. The value is put in a NULL Device property and this property is displayed in my theme.

joedornan · Post by **joedornan** » Mon Nov 28, 2005 12:13 pm

thanks for the responses everyone!

OK then. So we're not talking plug-and-play. Bummer.

I guess I'll have to wait a little longer for the tech to be a little more consumer freindly.

Unless maybe this will do what I need...

http://broadband.motorola.com/consumers ... efault.asp

plus,

http://broadband.motorola.com/consumers ... /hmsm4150/

which seems to be a rebranded:

http://www.xanboo.com/

Cheers,

-Joe