I am looking into monitoring five fridges and freezers.
Using temperature sensors that will alarm me via email in case a breaker is kicked or something goes wrong.
Does anyone know of a good z-wave temperature sensors?
Johenkel
The sensors I use for this task are the Homemanageables HM-TS001’s & Everspring ST-814’s and I believe they are exactly the same units.
Even though the device responds very quickly to temperature and humidity changes, the interaction between the device and Vera is slow, so the updates don’t happen as quick. One thing to note about these sensors is they only report down to -4F, my deep freeze on the other hand is set at -10F; so it’s always the same temp displayed in the GUI so I’ve made it a point to check the sensor occasionally just to make sure it’s still working, but I do have an alert set if the sensor reports anything > -4F.
In addition to the sensors, all my fridges, freezers and wine coolers are connected to SmartSwitches so I can monitor the wattage as well, the Smartswitches are not being turned off in any of my scenes but I’ve had occasions where they have turned off; my guess is corrupted Z-Wave data, so I have a scene that notifies me if any of the switches turn off as well as turning the switches back on after a 5 min delay.
Still on my to-do list is a scene that alerts me if there is no wattage reported from those switches for > 1hr, in case of a power outage.
Interesting setup. Transmission range is ok when the fridge door is closed?
The good thing about battery operated devices is they can hop on the network from the closest mains powered device; so no, I’ve not had any range issues.
My biggest concern was the battery life would be very short in the sub zero temps, but there’s not been any significant differences to a few I have in room temperature setups.
I would use a X-300 temperature module. http://www.controlbyweb.com/x300/
The would allow 8 temperature at .1 degree accuracy and the email alert would come from it and not the Vera. Much more stable and I have written code to have the Vera read all eight channels of temperature. It would also has 3 relays that can be used for external alarms as well.
I have an eight channel PC based temperature graphing tool that I use for my yachts…you might want that as well!
Regards
Tim Alls
AllSeas Yachts