Because I have nothing better to do with my life, I thought about throwing in a device into my parents’ passive cellar that sends temperature/humidity data to my iPhone. Does such a thing exist?
Given their OCD nature, wine geeks prefer anal thermometers.
There’s a long-running thread on this topic: What do you use to monitor temp and humidly in your cellar?
Numerous previous threads but to be responsive, I have used the La Crosse Alert System for years. The mobile app is very good with customizable temp and humidity alerts that can be sent to both e-mail and text. My gateway recently died so bought a new kit that includes a probe that attaches to the sensor for $24 on Amazon. So now I have bot the new and old sensor connected giving me 3 separate temperature and humidity measurements in my odd shaped cellar.
Technical support is sometimes iffy and their technical support website is horrible. Great interface on the app with a graphical interface along with strip charts along with tabulated data that can be exported.
I used LaCrosse for a while, but moved to Wireless Tag: https://goo.gl/QLemY8 Been very happy and it’s much more robust (you can get sensors for lots of things if you want - refrigerator, door opening, etc.
App is better than Lacrosse, push alerts that really work, more configurations, and no on-going fees.
There are a few aspects that are a touch rough around the edges but overall I’ve been very happy.
I could only download 30 days of temperature/humidity data at BEST, then LaCrosse scaled that down to 7 days, which was a joke. THEN, they discontinued my device, and it no longer functioned. I would not consider buying anything from LaCrosse.
IF you already have a home automation system like the Samsung Smarthings, you can add any number of zwave or zigbee wireless temp, humidity, motion, water, etc sensors to it. If you dont, its a good time to get into it, its hugely expansive and near endless in what you can monitor and control. plus they integrate well with Alexa and Google home. You could literally ask it what the temp is at any time. or you can set alarms. If the temp gets too high, you can secretly install a Nest or other smart thermostat and have a trigger to blast the AC to cool the cellar a few more degrees.
Thanks Andrew. I’m not a big fan of La Crosse either. I put an order in for Wireless Tags and will also get their tags that alert based on water (at water heater and under kitchen sink).
Yeah, Steve, I’ve been thinking of adding a few sensors for non-wine things like that (water), as well as for garage doors (open or close). Lots of possibilities, limited only by your willingness to spend $20-30 for each thing you monitor!
Looks like the wireless tag system relies on their cloud service for any alerting or remote access- Is that correct? Any idea how solid this company is for the long term? I wasn’t able to find much on them to determine how stable they will be long term.
Brian - Do you need constant reporting to your phone or would a system that you can download data to your smartphone be sufficient? In our vineyard we use a small data logger from Onset Computing(MA) that records temperature and humidity at any frequency you care to. When you want the data you just walk up to the device with an app on your smartphone and ask for the data download. It will allow you to look at it in a spreadsheet or in graphic form. Not sure that meets your needs but it’s relatively inexpensive.
I like my Wireless Tag system and just hope the company stays around. I have sensors on the cellar and garage doors, and am getting ready to add them to the privacy fence gates that do not lock.
Yes - your data goes up to the cloud and that’s where you access it. I’ve found the push alerts to be nearly instantaneous - if I enter my cellar, the chime for motion goes off within seconds (not sure if the software has a local push ability).
It’s a decent question, but that’s a risk with just about everything. Lacrosse seemed to be decent but as reported by others and experienced by me their support for the alerts system seemed to decline (if it was ever there). Given the relatively modest pricing for these sensors I think it’s a risk worth taking.
The cloud is always a potential concern. Hard to speculate on the future of any company. I really like the wireless tag. Huge amounts of back data at any frequency you want. Virtually no lag. I open my wine cellar door. 1/2 second later my iphone beeps. Its been very reliable and very feature rich. Battery life is not as long as I would hope but the batteries are cheap and easy to replace. The only potential con as with most of these systems is that it depends on the companies cloud service. BTW: It integrates with Alexa very easily and works well.
https://store.wirelesstag.net/blogs/news/amazon-alexa-echo-integration
Don’t find really any rough edges. Compared to most other smart home products I have played with its easy to use and reliable to setup and operate. Wish I could say that for some of the light bulbs and switches I have tried. I have 8 sensors now across 2 houses.
Support for iphone is great with an app and widget. The app is just a wrapper around their website. The UI is consistent between the app and website which is nice. They have a widget for iphone which I use:
Do any of these systems work if you are trying to look at temp/humidity of a remotely located storage unit? Like can you set up the sensor to connect to the storage facility’s internet and then connect through a phone app? Sort of like a Pet Cube or one of those pet cams works.
You need to connect the gateway with ethernet, but if the storage facility would allow that then you could remotely monitor it. (You could probably also McGyver some sort of wireless bridge to wired ethernet as well.
Just to illustrate more clearly, each of the sensors is “paired” with a gateway (which is about the size of an altoids tin with a small antenna). The gateway connects to your network. The sensors communicate to the gateway, which connects to the cloud server, and the app pulls the data from the cloud server (or it’s pushed from it).
You can monitor sensors connected to multiple gateways within the app (single login), but those gateways have to be connected to a network via ethernet cable.
And the gateways needs AC. That can be a limiting factor. I’d hoped to put one in my ministorage locker, but there’s no AC available.
Yep. Needs both AC and a physical ethernet connection- Communication to the sensors is wireless, but not to the interwebz.
I received one to play with today and so far seems pretty dang easy and useful. I like the idea that I can leave town and have an alert if something goes wrong, or just check in for piece of mind.
I put one of these in a passive room in my basement. Makes it easy to observe temp and humidity on my iPhone. No issues with it. Got on Amazon for like 50 bucks. There are probably cheaper ones out there that do the same, I didn’t shop around too much.
Looks very similar to the wireless tag, except
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doesn’t need the gateway for local monitoring (~300 ft range)
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Gateway is wifi enabled if you want world wide monitoring
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Cost’s quite a bit more (presumably due to the wifi)