Re: Remote temp sensing help??

From: Scott Miller (scott_at_3xf.com)
Date: 01/09/05 

Date: Sun, 9 Jan 2005 14:46:02 -0800

> I need some temp senders so I can have a remote station in the house
> and each one can constantly indicate the inside temp so if the heater
> dies I can get down there and fix it. I can have a switch to cycle
> through them manually I do not need a 4-station setup but that would
> be a nice luxury, cost permitting.
>
> There is 110v in all places so batteries are not an issue. Can anyone
> suggest a CHEAP kit I can get? The farthest away sender would be about
> 800 feet.

This is probably overkill for your application, but I sell a kit of my own
design that can do that...

http://n1vg.net/opentracker

It's really intended to be used over amateur radio, but if you don't have a
license you could probably use it with a radio on one of the nonlicensed
bands. MURS, maybe - I'm pretty sure telemetry is forbidden on FRS and
GMRS.

I've got a number of users using these for temperature and voltage
monitoring on remote mountaintop repeater sites. The cool part is that if
you do have a ham license (easy enough to get), you can use an existing
nationwide APRS network on 144.39 MHz that'll get your data onto the web.
And because I've got so many people using these things for enviromental
monitoring (I originally designed them for GPS-based vehicle tracking) I'm
working on developing an email notification system, so you could be notified
when the temperature crosses a defined threshold. That's assuming you're on
the APRS network - standalone, you'd have to run a receiving station
yourself.

Yeah, at 800 feet you're probably better off using off-the-shelf home
automation stuff. But for ranges of many miles, this is a pretty slick (and
cheap) solution.

Scott

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