[ale] [OT] how do I monitor the "weather" in my computer room
Ron Frazier (ALE)
atllinuxenthinfo at techstarship.com
Thu Jun 6 14:24:55 EDT 2013
Hi David and all,
I appreciate all the replies to my "weather" monitoring question. You
guys have brought up some interesting points and pointed out some
interesting hardware. I've read all the posts but haven't had a chance
to reply to all. I chose this one to reply to since this represents one
of the most interesting inexpensive alternatives.
As to why I want to measure the temperature of the room, it's just a
quick and simple technique which is a proxy for the pc temperature. I
check the machine every day or two anyway, so I know if the fans are
running or if they're whining, etc. I also know that if the ambient is
within a certain range, then the temperatures of the pc's components are
likely to be within their normal range too. The other reason to do that
is that there is no thermostat in that room. I have to juggle the
opening of the hvac intake and supply vents to sort of balance the
temperature in that room with the rest of the house. Thus, if the
ambient gets too high, I have to open the vents a bit wider. If it gets
too cold (wasting energy), I have to close them a bit.
The sensor device described in the article mentioned article measures
temperature. I also found this one, which appears to be from the same
manufacturer, which also measures humidity.
http://www.chinavasion.com/china/wholesale/Electronic_Gadgets/Cool_Gadgets/USB_Hygrometer_Thermometer-Server_Room_Temperature_Monitor
Some other very good sensors have been mentioned. I really had to stick
to a limited budget for this purpose. The quickest and relatively cheap
option for me was to add an additional sensor to my Oregon Scientific
weather station which I already had. This unit already has multi
channel capability, so the radio signals don't conflict. I only have to
push a button on its display panel to get the basement room temperature
and humidity. This solution cost me $ 33. This sensor is relatively
good quality and can link to many Oregon Scientific products.
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B000WOG90E/ref=pe_309540_26725410_item
I started thinking about your comment about measuring the temperatures
in the pc. That obviously would have value since I could potentially do
all sorts of neat things with the data including remotely monitoring it,
putting it in a database, graphing it, etc. if I wanted to go to the
trouble.
Then the thought hit me, WELL DUH!, the pc already has sensors in it!
In fact, I have a widget on my Gnome panel showing the cpu temp and the
hdd temps. So, I started thinking about how to extract this data. This
machine is running mint. As it turns out, I can capture temps on the
cpu, hdd's, and gpu's all from command line utilities as follows.
Lm-sensors is running, which gives some of these capabilities.
ron at Bugs01 ~ $ sensors
k10temp-pci-00c3
Adapter: PCI adapter
temp1: +42.5°C (high = +70.0°C)
As far as I know, this is the cpu temperature.
ron at Bugs01 ~ $ hddtemp /dev/sda
/dev/sda: open: Permission denied
Woops. Gotta use sudo with this one. That may make it hard to run an
automated script.
ron at Bugs01 ~ $ sudo hddtemp /dev/sda
[sudo] password for ron:
/dev/sda: ST9320320AS: 26°C
This is the temperature for that hard drive. I'm not sure if lm-sensors
is driving this or something else.
ron at Bugs01 ~ $ aticonfig --adapter=1 --odgt
Adapter 1 - AMD Radeon HD 6700 Series
Sensor 0: Temperature - 75.00 C
The ATI video driver provides this utility as far as I know.
So, I can run command line utilities for each critical temperature and
get a sort of free form text output. This brings up more questions.
CAVEAT: I may not have the time to go to the trouble to implement this.
But, it's still neat to learn what options are available.
1) How can I parse the relevant data for each, title and temp in a
structured format, and email it to myself with the data in the subject line?
2) How can I parse the relevant data and put in into a simple web page
as follows? I haven't written raw html in years, so forgive me if there
are errors. I'm changing the begin and end tags for this example so
this doesn't screw up email readers. The data could be put into a
table, but I don't remember how to write that code by hand. One problem
is that each command line utility outputs the answer in a different
format. This page would be updated every few minutes.
*-html*
*-head*
*-title*
Bugs01 PC - Temperature readings - 2013-06-06 - 02:03 PM
*title-*
*head-*
*-body*
Bugs01 PC - Temperature readings - 2013-06-06 - 02:03 PM*p*
*p*
CPU: 42.5°C*p*
HDD1: /dev/sda: ST9320320AS - 26°C*p*
GPU1: AMD Radeon HD 6700 Series - 75.00°C*p*
*p*
*body-*
*html-*
3) Once I have this tiny web page with my temperature data in it, how do
I set up a micro tiny pico web server, just to serve up less than a
dozen web pages, just on the LAN, not WAN? Apache would be WAY WAY
overkill for this. I don't need any security as long as the server
responds only if requests are coming from the LAN. The data goes
through the same wifi adapter whether going to the LAN or WAN, but the
source address subnet of the request would be the same as the subnet of
the server.
4) How do I take the data, and stick it into a text file, spreadsheet,
or database so I can keep historical records?
There are many possibilities. Again, I may not have time to implement
them, but I'd like to know your thoughts.
Sincerely,
Ron
On 5/29/2013 8:11 PM, David Tomaschik wrote:
> Why bother measuring the temperature of the room? Measure
> temperatures of the machine if you're concerned about it overheating.
> If you want to measure air temperature coming into the machine,
> there's an article here on using a $15 USB thermometer to measure air
> temperature:
> https://grepular.com/Using_Linux_to_Monitor_Room_Temperature_Remotely_and_Cheaply
>
>
> BTW, your thermometers actually seem to be quite good. +/- 1 deg F is
> very reasonable for measuring room temperature -- in fact, I would be
> shocked if there was less than 1 degree of variance in the temperature
> throughout the room. In the room where my always-on computer is, the
> variance is about 8 degrees from one area to another, so unless the
> thermometer is placed very carefully, 1 degree is insignificant. What
> would be more interesting is if a given thermometer is stable, or
> tends to have readings that float around.
>
>
> On Wed, May 29, 2013 at 2:47 PM, Ron Frazier (ALE)
> <atllinuxenthinfo at techstarship.com
> <mailto:atllinuxenthinfo at techstarship.com>> wrote:
>
> Hi all,
>
> I have a computer in a downstairs room that runs all the time.
> The processes I have it doing generate lots of heat; and there is
> no hvac thermostat there. There is a heating / air vent and
> return though, so it gets some air circulation. I need to monitor
> the temperature in the room from upstairs.
>
> I bought an Acurite backyard weather thermometer from home depot
> with remote sensor. I put batteries in the sensor and display and
> verified that the sensor is transmitting. I sat both units a foot
> apart in the living room maybe 12 feed from the honeywell
> thermostat on the wall. I trust the temperature reading of the
> honeywell more than any other sensor I have.
>
> The honeywell says it's 73 in this room. It doesn't show decimals.
> My fairly nice Oregon Scientific weather station shows 73.6 in
> this room.
> A cheap Lacross Technology weather monitor that I use to monitor
> humidity in the basement says 73.9 in this room.
> And a cheap Lacross Technology (I think) wall clock shows 73.0 in
> this room.
>
> It's actually annoying that all these sensors within 12 feet of
> each other are so different. I guess I'll assume that the actual
> temperature is between 73 and 74; and I think it's more toward 73.
>
> My NEW weather monitor is showing 74 or 75 on both indoor and
> outdoor temp with both sensors in the same place, which probably
> about 1-2 degrees high. This one doesn't display decimals.
>
> In any case, while that's not ultra critical, I'm considering
> returning it.
>
> So, I'm looking into other alternatives.
>
> 1) Buy another more expensive weather station, like another Oregon
> Scientific. That would cost $ 50 - $ 75.
>
> 2) Buy a wifi or lan attached temperature sensor. That way, I
> could just display the weather sensor's web page from a local
> 192.168.x.x address and see the temperature in the basement room.
>
> 3) Use a rpi plus a sensor to do the same thing as number 2.
> Would probably cost more.
>
> 4) Attach a USB temp sensor to the pc downstairs and run a web
> server on it to display the temperature.
>
> Other than having a more accurate stand alone unit like the one I
> bought, I like option 2 best. That way, I could set a web page up
> in a small window on my monitor upstairs to show the downstairs
> temperature and set it to auto reload every few minutes. Also, I
> could run a script on the downstairs computer to poll the sensor
> periodically and send me an email if the temperature exceeds a
> preset limit.
>
> Anyone know what I might use to get this done?
>
> By the way, when I was researching how to monitor my basement
> humidity, I found out that any humidity sensor less than about $
> 300 is probably rubbish for precision. The tolerance is usually +
> / - 5%. I think that's ridiculous, but I guess it's hard to do
> much better for cheap.
>
> Thanks in advance.
>
> Sincerely,
>
> Ron
>
>
>
> --
>
> Sent from my Android Acer A500 tablet with bluetooth keyboard and
> K-9 Mail.
> Please excuse my potential brevity if I'm typing on the touch screen.
>
> (PS - If you email me and don't get a quick response, you might
> want to
> call on the phone. I get about 300 emails per day from alternate
> energy
> mailing lists and such. I don't always see new email messages
> very quickly.)
>
> Ron Frazier
> 770-205-9422 (O) Leave a message.
> linuxdude AT techstarship.com <http://techstarship.com>
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>
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> --
> David Tomaschik
> OpenPGP: 0x5DEA789B
> http://systemoverlord.com
> david at systemoverlord.com <mailto:david at systemoverlord.com>
>
>
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--
(PS - If you email me and don't get a quick response, you might want to
call on the phone. I get about 300 emails per day from alternate energy
mailing lists and such. I don't always see new email messages very quickly.)
Ron Frazier
770-205-9422 (O) Leave a message.
linuxdude AT techstarship.com
Litecoin: LZzAJu9rZEWzALxDhAHnWLRvybVAVgwTh3
Bitcoin: 15s3aLVsxm8EuQvT8gUDw3RWqvuY9hPGUU
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