Best Freezer Temp Sensor?

[Pete]

Personally like this system from Accurite. It is wireless and it does utilize batteries and has it's own display such that you can use the display and Homeseer to monitor both your refrigerator and freezer.

AcuRite 00986A2 Refrigerator/Freezer Wireless Digital Thermometer

Thinking too that RFXCom will read this sensor. Recently here have added (playing still) a Meteostick which does read Accurite wireless sensor weather station stuff.

Over the last few years here have had to replace an ice maker (2 years old) and did spend some time taking this and that apart. There are now low voltage panels and sensors inside of the freezer and refrigerator. You might be able to tap in to one of the boards for some low DC voltages.
This one (which I still have) is a Kenmore Elite. Old now and working fine with the replaced ice maker. Moved to garage - probably going to move it to the basement.

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Current newer combo frig and freezer has all LED inside illumination. Guessing these lamps are DC powered. I am already having issues with the piece of crap ice maker in it. (less than one year old and still under warranty any how). It is a Frigidaire gallery side by side job. Junk actually compared to the Kenmore Elite.

[randy]

I initially had Everspring Z-Wave temperature/humidity devices in the refrigerator and freezer compartments. They worked great for about a year. Then I started looking at how many battery operated devices I was maintaining and decided to eliminate as many as possible. I had over 20 battery only devices and now have 1. I went to OneWire temperature probes on the refrigerator, freezer and chest freezers. I wired the probes in from the back after looking at exploded views to be sure I avoided coolant piping and wiring. I drilled just slightly larger holes than the wire attached to the probe, mounted the probe and threaded the wire out the back. I sealed the inside and outside wire entry points. The probes are DS18B20 devices in a stainless housing with a short lead. These are about $1.80 each in qtys of 10 from China on eBay. The OneWire devices all go to EDS OWServers, connected to HS with Ultra1Wire3.

[Pete]

Here did see a way to run a wired sensor when playing with the ice maker on the Kenmore Elite. The ice maker repair was low on the WAF at the time (had her move everything in there to another freezer for a few hours).

Basically you just need to follow the water lines for the ice maker for the freezer section and the wires to the control panel for the refrigerator section. Easy access these days.

Here relating to 1-wire purchased a few 1 wire sealed probes that came in a set with a 9097 USB 1-wire sensor a few years ago.

I am looking at the Accurite sensors though because of the local display and wireless connection to the RFXCom or Meteostick stuff.

It will function independently and provide stats to Homeseer. Hopefully I can tap in to one of the LED lamps for power. (freezer has three and frig has four).

Currently the front LCD display shows freezer and frig temp.

~$16.99 on Ebay...

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[rmasonjr]

Good to know! I am thinking about what I will do in the future. It appears that 1-wire is becoming obsolete. Not much support for it on windows 10 and HS3. Also the TEMP08 seems to be fading away. Perhaps there will be an IOT device specifically designed for refrigerators/freezers. I guess receiving a warning message on my phone from an IOT device would be an acceptable alternative to HS3?

Steve Q


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1-Wire on the Raspberry Pi is awesome. You can send JSON calls from it directly to HS. No more serial ports!

[Steve Q]

I see a "smart refrigerator" in my future. It will send me messages like "The head lettuce is 7 days old. Consider a salad for dinner tonight". It will be cloud connected to my grocery store and will know what and when I purchased perishable food. Alexa will make recipe suggestions based on what is in the fridge. [emoji3]

Steve Q


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[Pete]

Here built a small test 1-wire hub using an RPi2 in the attic. Rob has helped me reading the delimited text file being generated by it. This file is being written to the Homeseer data directory and HS reads it every couple of minutes. Still in test mode here as I have added a lightning sensor to it. Next endeavor is another one for the main floor and basement here.

Here have a collection of 1-wire sensors that started in the 1990's. (AAG, Midon, Hobby boards).

Here using an old 1-wire program called digitemp

Aug 18 10:30:03 Sensor 0 C: 26.88 F: 80.38
Aug 18 10:30:04 Sensor 1 C: 25.66 F: 78.18 H: 62%
Aug 18 10:30:05 Sensor 2 C: 22.19 F: 71.94 H: 55%
Aug 18 10:30:05 Sensor 3 C: 22.47 F: 72.44 H: 56%
Aug 18 10:30:06 Sensor 4 C: 22.34 F: 72.22 H: 56%
Aug 18 10:30:06 Sensor 5 #0 6963
Aug 18 10:30:06 Sensor 5 #1 6896

Concurrently running another old 1-wire program called OWFS. There are linux python and perl scripts which read these files.

And

You have the option as Rob mentions above of utilizing JSON, MQTT, Arduinos et al these days for reading the one wire sensors.

New Samsung smart refrigerator freezers are already connected to the cloud.
They even have a camera inside such that you can look inside your frig via your mobile phone.

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[Steve Q]

1-Wire on the Raspberry Pi is awesome. You can send JSON calls from it directly to HS. No more serial ports!

Thanks, is there 1-wire software available for the Pi? Or did you write it yourself?

Steve Q


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[rmasonjr]

Thanks, is there 1-wire software available for the Pi? Or did you write it yourself?

Steve Q


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It's available on the web. I think it is written in Python.
From that script, you can easily add a JSON call.

The problem is that it's all still sitting on my workbench. Running the wires for 1-wire takes more time than the software setup

[Pete]

@Steve

1-wire technology has been around since the 1990's.

Just about every piece of automation software back then and today uses 1-wire technology. (freeware and paid and windows and linux)



Here is the 1-wire wiki.

Homeseer 1, 2 and 3 have plugins which utilize 1-wire technolgy.

UltraJones (Randy) plugin utilizes a 1-wire hardware hub that has been around for a long time. This device is based on original software written to utilize 1-wire sensors called OWFS.

Today you can connect 1-wire sensors directly to the RPi bus and read these sensors directly.

That said if you are running windows you can test Jon00's 1-wire stuff (freeware) using a Maxim 9097.

Have a read here:

Introduction to 1-Wire networks (Jon00)

and here:

MidonDesign 1-wire application guide


and read about the hardware that Ultra uses for 1-wire stuff here:

Ultra1Wire2 HSPI

Embedded Data Systems Intelligent 1-Wire Interface

[randy]

Thanks, is there 1-wire software available for the Pi? Or did you write it yourself?

Steve Q


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The EDS OWServers are also a great solution. Their advantages

• Ethernet or WiFi communication
• Dynamic current regulation to support up to 22 OneWire devices on a single run of up to 1000 feet
• Up to three 1000 foot runs per server with any number of devices on each run up to the 22 device total.
• Data can be viewed through a built in web server or downloaded as XML

I have three of them running since late 2014 and they have never even hiccuped on reporting or maintaining connectivity. They have been 100% reliable for over 2-1/2 years. At $100 they cost 3X what a Pi board would, but you would still need an SD card, power supply and case for the Pi making the real cost difference a little less. While my Pi 3 boards with high end cards seems to cure it, my earlier experience with Pi B+ and Pi 2 projects (and Z-Nets) trashing SD cards makes me a little less excited to depend on them, especially for critical temperature measurements.

[Pete]

Here looked at how Vera was doing 1-wire with the EDS server or an RPi OWFS EDS Server emulator.

I run a scripted PHP file here which generates a looking like xml file and hopefully the plugin will read it.

Thing is that the EDS server generates much more than basic sensor data to it's xml file.

If this works then you would be able to DIY an EDS server with an RPi and have Ultra's plugin read the data from the OWFS server running on the RPi.

You can solid state this RPi server to a microrouter (cheaper than an RPi) running OpenWRT which runs the operating system in flash. The microrouter has built in wireless and wired connections and smallest one right now that I play with is 1" X 2". In another tinkering experiment installed an RTC with a 1-wire temperature sensor and it worked great except that the RTC is too big.

[Steve Q]

Sorry if I gave the impression that I am a novice when it comes to 1-wire. Far from that. I have been using 1-wire since I started with HS2 (15 years ago?) I am using Michael McSharry's xAP plugins, TEMP08, and MIDON1WIRE. I have multiple temperature networks, voltage monitoring networks, and a door/window sensor network. My HAVC system relies heavily on the data from 1-wire temperature sensors throughout my house. I have collected millions of temperature values over the years and I have massive excel spreadsheets of the data.

But it seems to me that only a few people are currently interested in 1-wire. Perhaps it's time to look at other options.

Steve Q


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[Pete]

Understood Steve.

Well most newbie automation folks today just look for easy button wireless sensors that they can watch on the smartphones via the cloud. They are mostly unaware of 1-wire technology.

Homeseer embraces Z-Wave technology such that you can utilize Z-Wave for just about anything these days (same as Zigbee) and purchase wireless sensors to add to your Z-Wave network.

Yes here too used to use multiple 1-wire networks with multiple Temp0X's and Michael's xAP stuff and did have runs of cat5e just for one wire devices when using HS2 running on Windows server. Started here too with the AAG weather station, Dallas tipping bucket, HB barometer sensor and 1-wire dual counters. I currently prefer the older AAG combo temperature / humidity sensors as the are 1/2 the size of my index finger nail. The HB and Midon combo sensors are much larger. Hobby Boards is coming back.

Hobby Boards will return soon.
The business has been purchased from the previous owner and our plan is to make available as many of the products as possible.
We would love to hear from you about these products. What products would you like to buy? What products would you like to see us offer?
Please email us at: info@hobbyboards.com

Homeseer always has had 1-wire connectivity as you well know (HS1,HS2 and HS3).

Weather wise went to using a Davis weather station. I always though wanted to be able to use my 1-wire stuff with the weather station which I did anyhow.

I have used Cumulus and was using CumulusMX here. Now switching over to WeeWx for weather as you can mix in 1-wire stuff and now utilize the new lightning sensor board and read a delimited text file over to Homeseer for data.

That said I do not run Homeseer 3 on Windows anymore and have switched over to Linux and wanting now to implement my 1-wire stuff in pure linux whatever flavor that would be. Y

I have shut down the temp0X's, xAP et al stuff when switching over to Linux.

Above Rob mentioned that you can connect and build a 1-wire hub right on the RPi2 with little or no other devices (just temperature sensors connected to the RPi i2C Bus.). The hardware is cheap. It does involved some basic scripting as mentioned above. Same too and even cheaper is building an Arduino with the single purpose of 1-wire temperature measurements. The new Rock64 (an update from the Pine64) is smaller than the RPi3 and uses eMMC memory or a microSD card.

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You can also purchase RPi 1-wire "hats" or shims that fit over the GPIO pins on an RPi these days.

Here I am using a 1-wire USB 9097 in the attic connected to an RPi2. Purchased a few of these sold as kits with temperature sensors a few years back.
Also here have a few of the Maxim sold RS-232 9097's.

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Looking here for my stack o Temp0X devices. Originally had three online. I think I have 5-6 of these (hot spares). None of them ever failed me.

This is the really the new way to utilize 1-wire devices. 1-wire sensors have never really faded away.

1-wire sensors are still utilized much in the science and engineer fields of environmental studies.

Thing is too that to DIY with this new stuff (RPi's, arduino's et al) you will need to tinker a bit with Linux hardware and software.

I let go of my old 1-wire stuff by shutting it down and disconnecting it and switching to Linux from Windows. But that is me.

[bdraper]

Sorry if I gave the impression that I am a novice when it comes to 1-wire. Far from that. I have been using 1-wire since I started with HS2 (15 years ago?) I am using Michael McSharry's xAP plugins, TEMP08, and MIDON1WIRE. I have multiple temperature networks, voltage monitoring networks, and a door/window sensor network. My HAVC system relies heavily on the data from 1-wire temperature sensors throughout my house. I have collected millions of temperature values over the years and I have massive excel spreadsheets of the data.

But it seems to me that only a few people are currently interested in 1-wire. Perhaps it's time to look at other options.

Steve Q

Steve, I have also used the TEMP08, it is a great piece of hardware and like you also started using 1-wire networks roughly around 15 or so years ago. I am currently using the Arduino plugin to monitor temperature and 26 sensors. Some are in rooms to monitor ambient temperature, HVAC vents, outside, in the attic and crawlspace, water lines, sump pump, etc.

I use a mixture of a linear and stubbed topology 1-wire network. The Arduino 1-wire networks have a cable length of around 300 to 400 feet or so for each one, probably 1,000 feet of cable total. Most of the stubs are less than 3 feet, however there are a few stubs that are 10 to 20 feet.

I am currently using a number of DS18B20 (https://www.sparkfun.com/products/245) and some are pre-made, see https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0...?ie=UTF8&psc=1. The pre-made units are for attaching to water lines, outside temperature and others for monitoring temperature in a sump pump located outside. On some installations a RJ-11 (telephone plugs) is used to crimp the DS18B20 into it and then plug it into a wall phone plug connected to the 1-wire network. The wall plate is multipurpose and contains internet, phone and temp, thus reducing the needed wall real-estate.

Temperature DS18B20 units crimped into a RJ-11 plug


Wall plate with internet, phone and temp (DS18B20), these units allow monitoring of room temperature.


I also monitor temperature in the air registers and returns with this type of connection.

[racerfern]

@Pete After having GE Profile for years, we ended up buying Frigidaire. What a waste of money. Fridge, stove, microwave and DW all have shortcomings. Never again.

It is a Frigidaire gallery side by side job. Junk actually compared to the Kenmore Elite.

My apologies for hijacking this thread, I won't carry on.