suggestions for air temperature measurement

Look at Omega Instruments for thermocouples...

Midon Design Temp08 plus as many MD3020 sensor modules as you need -

This company may be of interest:

Also...

Sounds to me that 1-wire might be the way to go. A two wire buss could support the sensors, and a $20 adapter for the computer. (use a full cat 5 for distance, and to provide for expandability.)

Dallas provides some good sample code on their website for interfacing Doing a "parasite" read on a sensor can be done on a single sensor in about a second, Each sensor has a unique ID, and the bast part is, I've gotten them for > event-driven

You might check out HomeSeer and the mcs Temperature plug-in - it does most of what you want; dunno if it meets your criteria of doing it _well_.

I'm about to put a 1-wire temperature sensor in each room of my house, then use mcs Temperature to gather data aimed at characterizing and optimizing my heating system (I've also purchased five communicating thermostats that will be controlled by HomeSeer).

- Dennis Brothers

Most home automation software is not well suited for logging analog (continuously variable) data. I'd be interested in learning about event-driven HA software that also manages analog data validation, manipulation, statistical analysis, storage, retrieval and graphical presentation _well_ (before I reinvent the wheel yet again ..)

HTH ... Marc Marc_F_Hult

Especially the ones they GOUGE for and don't support.

Likewise, HS2 may eventaully be ready for prime time but it's sure got a ways to go. Enough such that looking into CQC is worth considering...

Thanks for the suggestion. The mcs plug-in seems intrinsically very capable from what I could tell.

But I poked around the Homeseer site longer than I had patience for without finding a manual or any actual description. Did I miss it? And no url for a mcs web site. Apparently I have to download Homeseer (yet again), install it (yet again) and then download the plug-in on a trial basis in order to see the manual? What I did find was lots of discussions of problems and bugs in the forum. That's what has discouraged me from pursuing HomeSeer. For example, it took forever to get the NAPCO security working and IIRC, in the end they ditched the original 3rd party plug-in.

Some folks thunk what HomeSeer v2 would improve things, but that hasn't been the case as far as I can tell...

Monitoring with undependable/intermittent data system can be very tedious. Manual cleanup/bridging of the data set can unexpectedly consume the lion's share of the effort. That's part of why I discontinued using 1-wire. Early versions of the temperature sensors were flakey. Apparently they've improved, and the problems acknowledged, so I may give them another whirl.

Out of curiosity, what thermostats are you using? I've been happy with Enerzone/Statnet/Aprilaire which uses a straight-forward ASCII command set that could be adapted to homebrew devices.

.... Marc Marc_F_Hult

I have HS and I downloaded the mcs temp docs. Shall I send them to you? (1.8 meg word doc)

(I should add that it's true there are many problem reports, etc, posted in the forum, but given the scope of functionality of HS I don't find that unusual. My personal experience with HS has been pretty good. Investigate the plugin(s) well before buying, as you are wisely doing).

I'm with you on this.

Some of our users (Girder) have had success with the Dallas one wire stuff.

see

I agree they don't make it easy to preview manuals. You can get a pretty good picture of the capabilities by perusing the mcs temperature-specific forum.

FWIW, I've been running HomeSeer 2 for about a month with no problems.

Re the thermostats, I'm using RCS, which is supported by a HomeSeer plug-in. I've got a couple of zone controllers (a ZCV2 and a ZCV4) and five wall display units (three TS40 and two TS16). The major installation effort is running cable - all my existing thermostats are old-fashioned two-wire.

- Dennis Brothers

Since I'm using an ADI Ocelot and a SECU16I, I've had a lot of success using LM34's over the supervised inputs of the SECU16I. I use these to send x10 commands to turn on ceiling fans, operate relays to open and close zone valves etc.. Don't know how far you want to take it because ADI modules can be a bit pricey for someone on a low budget.

Ray

They're cheap, and if the location will be inaccessible, I would put in two of them, each on a different pair, so that if one dies, you can switch to the other.

The DS1820's are accurate to fractions of a ºC, although it's complicated to read them any more accurately than 0.5ºC (and might not be possible in parasitic power mode -- not sure on that point).

Here's a section of logging from my system (running on Solaris x86)... Oct 27 16:13:48 Temperature - Outdoors 18.0 Oct 27 16:14:37 Temperature - Freezer -23.0 Oct 27 16:14:37 Temperature - Fridge 4.5 Oct 27 16:15:48 Temperature - Freezer -23.5 Oct 27 16:16:21 Temperature - Loft 24.5 Oct 27 16:17:05 Temperature - Freezer -24.0 Oct 27 16:18:32 Temperature - Freezer -24.5 Oct 27 16:20:05 Temperature - Fridge 4.0 Oct 27 16:20:21 Temperature - Freezer -25.0 Oct 27 16:22:22 Temperature - Freezer -25.5 Oct 27 16:27:05 Temperature - Freezer -25.0 Oct 27 16:27:55 Temperature - Fridge 3.5 Oct 27 16:28:55 Temperature - Freezer -24.5 Oct 27 16:30:49 Temperature - Freezer -24.0 Oct 27 16:32:49 Temperature - Freezer -23.5 Oct 27 16:35:17 Temperature - Freezer -23.0 Oct 27 16:37:47 Temperature - Freezer -22.5 Oct 27 16:38:19 Temperature - Fridge 3.0 Oct 27 16:38:44 Temperature - Loft 24.0 Oct 27 16:41:01 Temperature - Freezer -22.0