Thanks a bunch. I did run across that
Watchport hardware in my research. It is
considered to be a much more reliable
solution to this problem. It also appears to
be within my price range. I'll look into
it further.
Mike
On 7/23/2010 4:30 PM, John Ellyson wrote:
Mike,
I got a bit busy at work or else I would have responded sooner.
(Yeah, I know. Strange idea to actually do some work while at work.)
Anyways, I'm doing something like this for our lab at work.
Unfortunately, I probably can't share my Perl code (employer's
intellectual property rights situation), but I'll try to share the
concept and whatever else I can without getting into trouble with my
employer.
The device that I used is the Digi Watchport/H sensor since we already
are using those for some other work. If you're not interested in the
humidity readings, you might find the Watchport/T sensor to be more
inline with your needs. The link below is for more details from the
manufacturer.
http://www.digi.com/products/wirelessdropinnetworking/sensors/din-watchport-sensors.jsp#models
In my implementation, I set up 4 of these sensors in each of the A/C
zones for our lab. I connected all four of them to a single system
running Windows. On that system, I set up a Perl script that
connected to the sensors using the Win32::SerialPort and used
Net::EasyTCP to set up a "telnet" server. The basic behavior is that
when a "client" connects, this script would:
1) Connect to a temperature/humidty sensor
2) Retrieve a reading
3) Sending reading to client
4) Repeat steps 1-3 for remaining sensors and then close the connection
I set this script (actually I bundled it into a self contained
executable using PerlApp from ActiveState) as a scheduled task to run
when the OS comes up. Eventually, I probably should update the script
to be run as a service.
There may be better and/or cheaper methods of accomplishing the same
thing, but that's what I used. Let me know if you have any questions
about my implementation.
Good luck on getting things set up!
John Ellyson
On Fri, Jul 23, 2010 at 3:31 PM, Mike Flannigan <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
On 7/23/2010 7:56 AM, Mike Flannigan wrote:
I'm looking to remotely monitor a digital thermometer
connected to a computer. The computer I plan to
use has USB and Serial. I have to use Windows,
but only because I couldn't get Unix loaded on this
old computer.
I need to export the temp to a location 1,000 miles
away. Haven't decided if I'm using the web, FTP,
Telnet, or what for the data transfer. I want flexibility
where I can write the Perl program to do what I need
to do.
I'm sending this to you guys in case one of you
has already grappled with this. I can see on the
internet that there are about 1,000 options.
Please call me or e-mail the list if you can help
me decide which way to go with this. Buying
something from a local store might be my
best option. I plan to go to EPO and Fryes
today to see what is available there.
I'm think this one is what I need, but I'm to
lazy to do all this work:
http://www.riccibitti.com/pc_therm.htm
This one seem really good:
http://www.spiderplant.com/hlt/index.html
but that first link says they are out of business.
Do these USB powered units work?
http://www.tomtop.com/pc-laptop-usb-powered-thermometer-temperature-sensor-data-log.html
http://www.lancos.com/webtherm.html
http://www.pcsensor.com/index.php?_a=viewProd&productId=15
<http://www.pcsensor.com/index.php?_a=viewProd&productId=15>
A very interesting one:
http://www.maxim-ic.com/products/ibutton/products/ibuttons.cfm
This one will probably work, given the price:
http://www.americanweather.com/product_info.php?cPath=23&products_id=48&osCsid=686d544982fe2f42e47e0dfe239aca47
<http://www.americanweather.com/product_info.php?cPath=23&products_id=48&osCsid=686d544982fe2f42e47e0dfe239aca47>
Talk on a blog:
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/mcreasy/archive/2004/07/19/187554.aspx
Mike Flannigan
281-286-6869
If EPO or Fry's have these products, they
don't know that they have them.
I'll probably just go with a cheap TemperNTC.
It's a cheap device of dubious quality with
very bad software, but I can probably get it
to work for me. If you do use this thing on
Windows, you probably need one of these
software upgrades:
http://www.alsgh.com/utac/
http://www.play-time.demon.co.uk/ThermoHID/index.html#download
It appears the Chinese manufacturer has
not gotten the thing in good working order yet,
so there is a lot of junk hardware out there.
In fact, I think it's probably all junk, but some
people have gotten it to work to some degree.
Mike
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