Raspberry Pi project help

Sky King

I have a project I'm working on where I need to do some remote temp monitoring.

From research I know this can be easily achieved with RPi. I've seen loads of pi projects online for this kind of thing.... Usually monitoring / controlling room temps in a house but not a million miles away from what I want to do.

I have a technical background myself but don't know computer programming. I know this kind of thing would be a cakewalk for anyone who is into programming.

I want to find someone to do this for me , and pay them for therir time, rather than try teach myself coding from scratch, which would be laborious and time consuming.

Any ideas of anyone or any place I should go for starters?

Thanks.

(Apologies if wrong forum. I had a look and thought this was best fit)

14ned

I'd be embarrassed to ask for money for such a task.

Internally here in my home, I actually use my server's motherboard temperature to monitor the room. It's always 3C over ambient. A service called RRDTool on Linux will record your computer's many temperature sensors over time. I've got a full history for the last three years. Very easy to install from Ubuntu package repo.

I'm not familiar with RaspPI's config, but I'd be amazed if sensors-detect on Linux couldn't find a temperature sensor on that board. As they expend virtually no power, you'll be at most 1C over ambient.

So just install RRDTool, lm-sensors and find a guide on the internet for setup. And you'll be done. This popped up on front of google: http://lazydroid.com/2013/05/raspberry-pi-monitoring-cpu-temperature-with-rrdtool/. Just use a different sensor instead of CPU sensor.

Niall

Sky King

Thanks for your reply Niall. The nature of the project is such that i need to use a temperature probe. I might need a couple of zones monitored simultaneously.

I'm going to buy a pi now any just start playing with it to see how i get on.

I'd be embarrassed to ask for money for such a task.

Why is that!?

14ned

Sky King wrote: »

Why is that!?

Solving your problem doesn't even require any programming, just installation and configuration of a few packages which already come with Linux. The remote sync of data can be done via rsync on a cronjob, or in my server's case I simply had the RRDTool data displayed via a local HTTP server.

I appreciate that all this stuff won't be as obvious to you and hence you want to pay someone to do it. But it just takes a few hours of reading pages on the web, and the big benefit to you down the road is you will understand it through and through which means you'll be able to extend it with extra monitoring.

For example, my server not only records the temperature, but also my home power consumption every 15 seconds. That lets me calculate how much turning on the oven costs me (quite a bit in fact, it's my biggest single consumer of electricity). Again, very straightforward to configure, and you'll have pinpoint accurate graphs going back many years.

Edit: This link on temperature monitoring with the RaspPI came up on Google: https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=201333, specifically the post mentioning "EasyIOT" about 20% down the page. Looks very straightforward.

Niall

Buford T Justice

14ned wrote: »

For example, my server not only records the temperature, but also my home power consumption every 15 seconds. That lets me calculate how much turning on the oven costs me (quite a bit in fact, it's my biggest single consumer of electricity). Again, very straightforward to configure, and you'll have pinpoint accurate graphs going back many years.


Niall

Care to share how you did this bit? I have a pi knocking around that I'm not using.....

14ned

Buford T Justice wrote: »

Care to share how you did this bit? I have a pi knocking around that I'm not using.....

You'll need a wireless electricity meter with USB like this model: https://www.amazon.co.uk/CM160-Electricity-Monitor-Compatible-Windows/dp/B004BDNR84/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1515443076&sr=8-1&keywords=cm160

I'm onsite in Dublin right now and so can't check for sure, but I think I used this library https://github.com/cornetp/eagle-owl to talk to the cm160 and to record all the power stats. I think it provides a web interface you can browse with pretty bar graphs. That's a Linux library, it's very easy to compile.

One annoying thing with that library - if it's the right one - is it pegs the CPU while it's running. So I set up a cronjob to run it once per day, and five minutes later to kill the process. The cm160 stores a month of history onboard, and so will send the day's data all at once. Works a treat.

One interesting thing is that my cm160 says I consumed more electricity than my electricity provider does, about 12% more. So it's not hugely accurate, but it definitely will give you the trends which is by far the most useful part. You can figure out how much your dryer costs you for example, just integrate the area under the spikes in the curve. That'll tell you where to go place a local power meter like you get from Maplin so you can measure devices individually.

I've got my electricity down to €60/month, despite running a Xeon server with lots of CPUs, RAM and disks 24/7. Baseline load for the house when it's idle is 200W. Not bad, considering.

Niall

SilverSideUp

Before Christmas I hooked a Pi up to our gas boiler to control our heating from the web. In the next few weeks I'm going to add two wireless room temperature sensors (using a DHT22 temperature and humidity sensor and an ESP32 microcontroller). I think I can probably help you. Just PM me if you need some help.

Sky King

Thanks! I just might do that. I bought the gear online so when it arrives I am going to have a go with it and see how far I get with this approach

http://www.instructables.com/id/Python-and-Raspberry-Pi-Temperature-Sensor/

Evil Phil

Hi All,

I took the "(paid)" out of the thread title cos technically it violates the charter rules, but this thread has the potential to be really interesting so I want to keep it open.

On that note, another rule we have is asking people to PM you for solutions, it results the thread disappearing into a black hole. If questions and answers could be kept in the thread it would make it very interesting, and useful to others who will discover it through the search engines.

Thanks,
E.P..

Sky King

OK Phil, duly noted.

bpmurray

I've used waterproof DS18B20 temperature sensors on a Pi to capture temperature readings from beehives. Initially I did it all in C, then in Python and then threw it all away and used drag & drop NodeRED instead - no programming required.