Monitor Server Room or Other Temperature with Graph, Tweet and Email

@Team_Infrastructure @artg_dms @Bill @wandrson

I have presented two classes based on the Wemos D1 Mini, a microcontroller board that sells for $4.00 and includes WiFi. I now have one in my cave sending temperature data to the cloud every twenty seconds. The wild swings come with a two story house with one HVAC and thermostat downstairs!

https://thingspeak.com/apps/matlab_visualizations/178190

It seems that DMS could use these in a number of ways. Send temperature data for the server room and other critical areas to the cloud like my example and send a Tweet when temperature exceeds some limit. Send an email when water from a roof leak or condensate line is detected in areas that have experienced leaks. Log the times that cabinet doors containing expensive equipment are opened. This could make reviewing video much easier. Log or email when server room doors are opened. Log temperature of each server or other sensitive equipment.

To test the concept, I will loan one unit to @Team_Infrastructure for a month and configure it as they specify. If it is seen as useful, the price of parts is under $20 each. My time, of course, if free and if we deploy several units, I will run a class to spread the knowledge and provide backup.

Background:

ThingSpeak is an IoT service that provides service free for non commercial use. I think we fit into that criteria but BoD should have someone review that if we decide to start using the service beyond a trial.

I have had classes on Build a $10 Alarm the Tweets and Arduino: Blynk into the Internet of Things using the Wemos. For the upcoming classes, you only need to bring a configured laptop - I furnish everything else.

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I believe we have a temp sensor/ recorder in the server room but I could be mistaken. It has a digital read out & logs to the server.

@bscharff would know since he set them up.

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I wonder if it can send an email or provide notification otherwise. I have been playing with this fascinating board and IoT service for a while and wanted to spread the word on how it could be used. I picked on the server room temperature since it had recently had a lot of interest.

Infrastructure e-mail gets Honeywell notifications regularly about the temperature in Woodshop going over 85 degrees.

Either the Server Room is not set up for such monitoring or it has never reached the set alarm threshold.

Could it be that the problem is not the temperature in the room, but only in select server units in the rack?

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It would be easy to monitor multiple server temperatures. I’m using the default upload and plot routines. They support eight fields and I’m only using one.

The $20 price that I mentioned is probably high. $8 is for 5V 2A wall wart power supplies. We might be able to find some of those we don’t need any longer.