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I'm trying to find some simple USB thermometers that work with OS X. I don't need any kind of fancy interface at all. All I'm actually going to do is use a command line program to prove the thermometers periodically. The reason for this is that I'm trying to set up some basic "home monitoring" in the new house I purchased. I don't live there yet so it will be especially useful to be able to at least track the temperatures, if not also a water sensor for the basement floor, and a fluid level sensor for the oil tank.
I want to monitor the basement, first floor and attic, so 3 sensors.
As it turns out, I have lots experience with this type of thing, I've been running this project for years:
http://www.macfixer.com/coldmac/
For that, I use something called a "THUM" sensor. It works really great, and also gives me humidity readings. BUT you can only use ONE per computer! They told me something along the lines of, to save money, each sensor does NOT have a unique serial number. So theres no way to differentiate between multiple sensors connected to the same computer. Bummer!
What I'm ultimately going to do is the same thing I did on that site. Have a shell script probe all sensors every few minutes, log to a database, then have the web page display various charts and graphs. It's actually much easier to make a system like this than you might think. And it should be pretty easy to make the script alert me directly if the temperature starts to get too cold, or if the basement floor water sensor starts reading water.
I want to monitor the basement, first floor and attic, so 3 sensors.
As it turns out, I have lots experience with this type of thing, I've been running this project for years:
http://www.macfixer.com/coldmac/
For that, I use something called a "THUM" sensor. It works really great, and also gives me humidity readings. BUT you can only use ONE per computer! They told me something along the lines of, to save money, each sensor does NOT have a unique serial number. So theres no way to differentiate between multiple sensors connected to the same computer. Bummer!
What I'm ultimately going to do is the same thing I did on that site. Have a shell script probe all sensors every few minutes, log to a database, then have the web page display various charts and graphs. It's actually much easier to make a system like this than you might think. And it should be pretty easy to make the script alert me directly if the temperature starts to get too cold, or if the basement floor water sensor starts reading water.