Originally developed as a django website hosted locally, now simply reports temperatures to www.initialstate.com
- Sensors as described in next section
- RaspberryPi compatible with sensor
- initialstate.com account, and api key
This should be used as a general overview of adding the water proof temperature sensor: https://learn.adafruit.com/adafruits-raspberry-pi-lesson-11-ds18b20-temperature-sensing/overview
You should have a water tight box if your RaspberryPi will sit outside. I opted for a clear top to show of my nerd skills to other nerds. The case will need 2 holes: 1 for power (microUSB) and one for the sensor wire.
These holes will need to be sealed with caulk/silicon to prevent water from getting in. I placed a paper towel in there under the pi to catch any water that may get in, hopefully before it gets to the rPi. I also, later, placed tin foil over the top, as well as heat sinks, to prevent the temperature from getting too hot. After I baked my first rPi.
I dropped my sensor in about a foot, in the shallow end, near the jets. This should be low enough to avoid surface temperature fluctuation, yet high enough to avoid getting eatten by the vaccum stingray.
Originally I developed a Django powered website to handle the data, and show graphs. Then I learned of initialstate.com which did all of what I wanted, and much more in an easier fashion. Since then, I've contacted support on a Saturday at 3pm EST. The Founder/CEO of the company responded in ~15min with lots of good helpful (technical) answers. What better do you want from a company? One thing to keep in mind, is that the ISStreamer library queues 10 events by default, so if you want your data to show up immediately, make sure to change this or flush the queue as per the instructions if you want to ensure the visualization is as real-time as possible.
Initial State has quite a few different views, and works with Samsung SmartThings, but just a quick view of what one day of data for my pool looks like
