This DIY Temperature Monitor Lets You Access Data Remotely

Keep tabs on the temperature, humidity and line voltage from an easy-to-use web interface.

Excessive heating can ruin electronics, something Clint Turner wanted to avoid. While doing maintenance for the Northern Utah WebSDR, he noticed the building the equipment is located in can get as hot as 130°F. In order to track the temperature and view the data remotely, he built his own humidity and temperature monitor.

The device works similarly to an Ambient Weather station but allows you to access the necessary data from the system easily. The monitor uses an ESP8266 board, which is not only cheap at $6. It has a vast library of software to use with it, including a DHT-22 temperature and humidity sensor and has WiFi capability. With the DHT-22 sensor, the unit has a wider humidity and temperature measurement range.

The device doesn't just measure the humidity of the building, but it can also monitor the AC line voltage to record increasing voltage levels. Information is gathered with Morse code on a low-powered unlicensed transmitter. This provides telemetry that can be picked up by any HF receivers on site. Because the monitor sits in an unattended location, a watchdog timer was added to automatically reset the device when needed.

Though the code is based on a web server by Rui Santos, it had to be modified to add needed features to the monitor, including code readings in Fahrenheit, the ability to record the minimum and maximum of all monitor parameters, and data points displayed in simple text. The information recorded by the monitor is available via a web page on the wireless network. Simply enter the SSID and password, and you’re good to go.

You can see all the intricate details of the building and coding process here.

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