Using a camera to monitor temperature.

[zhill29]

Hey guys, just had this idea today and thought I'd share.

Its been bitterly cold here in SD the past couple weeks and my furnace has been acting up. (Woke up this morning to a 50* house.) So I had this idea, I have an old thermostat I used to use with a shop furnace laying around so I hooked up one of the cameras through it, set to "cool" with the temp set a little lower than room temp so if the temp drops it will kill power to the camera. I set up BI's watchdog settings to send out an email as soon as the camera disconnects.

Currently cant see the actual temp remotely but at least this will give me a heads up while I'm at work or out of town if the furnace decides to quit on me so something can be done before pipes freeze.

Here's a link to the thermostat I'm using... http://www.walmart.com/ip/21799216?wmlspartner=wlpa&selectedSellerId=83&adid=22222222227016810151&wl0=&wl1=g&wl2=c&wl3=51810189071&wl4=&wl5=pla&wl6=83210969711&veh=sem

 

[SyconsciousAu]

Thats a really clever idea and a lot cheaper than spending $200 on a IP thermometer solution.

 

[Ranchcam]

How about leaving the camera on and putting a light on that apparatus (pretty cool idea) so that you see that the light is on when it is cold. The light going on or off should trigger an event in blue iris. I have a few of those thermocubes which do the same thing so I might be doing the same thing myself. Was thinking earlier of getting a temperature meter with a big dial or something but your idea put me up to something else. Just out of curiosity what is the $200 temperature solution for cameras?

 

[SyconsciousAu]

Just out of curiosity what is the $200 temperature solution for cameras?

http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/Ethernet-Temperature-Thermometer-TME-IP-network-email-alerts-web-login-Papouch-/191761528119

Not for cameras as such but an ethernet reporting temperature sensor.

 

[Ssayer]

I've got a personal weather station, so I put my local info on one of my cams and include the inside temperature on it (the info updates once a minute). That way I have all the info I want available all the time from BI on my phone...

 

[digger11]

I found a use for that crappy old 640x480 foscam pan/tilt camera I bought as my first IP camera. It sits in the living room of our mountain home, and is normally pointed at the front entryway to provide motion alerts if someone were to enter the front door. On the wall behind it I've mounted a 4-zone thermometer. When I hit preset 1, the camera pans around to the thermometer and I can read the temperature in all four zones. Although I haven't rigged it up yet, the thermometer has an audible alarm that can be enabled and will go off if a temperature rises or falls outside of a user configurable set of thresholds. It ought to be possible to set Blue Iris up so that it would trigger on the audio of the thermometer's alarm.

The reason I haven't bothered is because one of the first things I installed in the house was a Honeywell Wifi-enabled thermostat, and the Honeywell application will send me alarms if the thermometer loses connection with their server, or if the temperature rises or falls outside of the thresholds I've set.

As another option similar to what the OP did, I would think it would be relatively easy to connect a thermostat to the alarm inputs of the foscam to generate an external trigger event.

 

[ThePeacockRanch]

I like that idea of connecting a simple analog thermostat to the digital input of a camera. Bumping this thread for any other cool ideas. I've been trying to think of common items I already have to hook up to those connections. That would be an easy way to receive alerts when the temperature goes above or below the threshold of the thermostat setting.
I've just tested this theory with a thermostat and a normal doorbell switch also. Seems to do exactly as expected. Blue Iris can push those alerts to my phone as well.

 

[MacNCheese]

A Raspberry Pi would be great for this. A simple Python script could monitor a $2 temp probe and notify you when the temperature dropped. It would also be simple to log the temperature so you could see if there were any changes during the night.