What do you need for a home thermometre system?

[Pictsie]

Hi everyone!

I really need your help on this one.. My boyfriends birthday is in about a month and I'm kind of clueless about what I need to get him for what I'm planning.
He's a student of computer sciences and loves programming and a little of home engineering. Lately he has been nerding himself into some peculiar kitchen stuff like bread baking (which is really funny to watch :D) and other stuff which kind of lead to the idea, to set up some kind of temperature measuring home system. It started with a oven and fridge thermometre, but he thould it would be way cooler to have one kind of "station" with several sensors throughout our appartment (like in the oven, fridge, living room, balkony, etc.), which all report back, so that he can watch all temperatures of significance at once, having an overview over evrything important. Or something like that I really hope I explained that one right .___.

Since we're both students and constantly broke he didn't follow those plans much (except mentally, he's so excited about it), but with his birthday coming up, I thought he'd prefer some nerd equipment to actually set up this "super-exciting" (I'm sorry, I am female and a psychology major -.- But I love him lots!) system over some candle-light-thingy.
So I wanted to give him some kind of a kit to make it happen, or at least start to.

He really loves to work with Raspberry Pis (He's already got two of 'em) and I'm sure one of those little buggers could do the job. I'd be willing to get him another one, but maybe there is an alternative, cheaper way?
Also I figured out you'd need x kind of sensors to drop at the wanted locations, but I can't really wrap my mind around what kinds might be appropiate and what else you need to make them report back to your RasPi/?...

I'd really appreciate it if you had any suggestions - I only have him for technical advice and that's out of the question on this one, and I really want to make him happy and not ruin any surprise..


Best regards and lots of love,

Lara

 

[berkeman]

Welcome to the PF.

Does your boyfriend already know about Make Magazine? http://makezine.com/

It's a great gathering of DIY resources and links to projects/products. Have a look through their pages to see if you find anything related.

The main issue you/he will face is getting the data back to the central point & Pi. Wireless would be the most convenient, but will probably cost something like $20/node, which will get expensive. And all those nodes will need batteries that get replaced a few times a year. Not fun.

A lower-cost way would be to run thin twisted pair wires out to the temperature sensors, and use the Pi to gather their date from the multiple sets of twisted pair wires. I believe that Dallas Semiconductor has a 2-wire temperature sensor that runs from the DC voltage that you put across the twisted pair. Maybe check out their website (it may be called a "One-Wire" sensor, but I haven't looked at them for a while).

Have fun!

 

[Neumeric]

These are great, low cost and if I remember correctly, come with great free software. http://www.mccdaq.com/usb-data-acquisition/USB-1208LS.aspx

 

[jim hardy]

on a budget, you say ? But microcomputer savvy?
search on "serial temperature sensor"

tc74 is around one dollar at Digikey , and 2 wire interface - can raspberry do I^2C ?
http://ww1.microchip.com/downloads/en/DeviceDoc/21462D.pdf

TI's TMP 100 & 101 are competitive,
http://www.ti.com/lit/ds/sbos231g/sbos231g.pdf
but in a less convenient package.