Temperature / Humidity / Water Sensors (Wired and Wireless)

[zinger084]

Hello All,
 
For some reason, I can find what I'm looking for while searching, so I figured I'd post.
 
I have an Omni IIe panel...
 
1.  Is there a better or more cost effective remote temperature sensor for air besides the HAI offering?
2.  What are are the offerings for humidity sensors?
3.  I have a condensate pump on my furnace.  It occasionally stops working and water leaks on floor.  Are there water sensors out there that would work with this panel (best I found was the offering from Insteon but I think it's stand-alone).
 
Thanks.
 
P.S. - I used to find a lot of this information on google before (about 1 month ago...) and I really think they changed a search algorithm or something...???

 

[pete_c]

Welcome to the Cocoontech forum Zinger084.
 
Curious what specifically your are looking for?
 
I use flood sensors / temperature / temperature / humidity sensors today with my OmniPro II panel. 
 
They all work fine for me. 
 
Concurrently have multiple 1-wire networks with inexpensive sensors which can be utilized with the panel interplay with the automation software.

 

[Frunple]

Look into Arduino. They have a whole slew of sensors and can be interfaced with the panel.

 

[pete_c]

Curious what it is you are looking for zinger084?

 

[zinger084]

Look into Arduino. They have a whole slew of sensors and can be interfaced with the panel.

 
Great.  I'll check them out.
 

Curious what it is you are looking for zinger084?

 
I have a condensate pump for the furnace and I want to know when it's not working / water overflows onto floor.
 
Humidity would be to control an economizer for my house.
 
Temperature would be to control dampers throughout house and control setpoints on HVAC system.

 

[pete_c]

@zinger84
 
1 - here have a water flood sensor on the utility floor area adjacent to furnace, hot water heater and sump pump.  Mine is a powered device.
Its been a while but I am thinking its a 4 wire / GRI device which utilizes 12VDC from the panel.
 
2 - have combo HAI humidity / temperature sensors inside and outside of the home,  I also have a remote temperature sensor connected to my HAI Omnistat 2 thermostat.  The combo sensors are powered and use 4 wires and the remote temperature sensor for Omnistat uses two wires.
 
I am not aware of a third party temperature or temperature/humidity sensor for the HAI panel.

 

[connie]

An analog alarm temperature sensor would be a good thing to have installed in your home. It allows you to monitor the actual temperature that you have on site. Instead of knowing whether your temperature is too high or too low you could know the real temperature accurately in figures. You could even send alarms based on your user-configurable thresholds. You could have different thresholds for low critical,low,high and high critical alarms. You could also inspect the live temperature values in detail at remote site. You will be able to to specify several temperature thresholds that will trigger an alert message for you when they are crossed. I had my alarm setup done by calgary alarm. The signal that the alarm triggers is send to a security monitoring centre whenever the temperature crosses the threshold value that you have specified for your alarm.

 

[Desert_AIP]

For actual leaks, I use the GRI 2600 sensors on several zones.
 
I use the HAI temperature/humidity sensors, in multiple locations (outside, shop, attic, wine closet).
Coupled with three Omnistats I have multiple data points to determine temperatures and humidity levels. 
Why the aversion to using them with your system?

 

[cobra]

I'd like some of them, but the price is pretty high for a combo temp/humidity.  Anyone seen any good deals on them?

 

[cobra]

Recently had a basement freezer act up and thaw a bunch of food. It made me think about adding some temperature monitoring for refrigerator/freezers in the house. But I’d like to do 4 zones and the HAI sensors are pricey for that. Anyone done something similar?

 

[LarrylLix]

Recently had a basement freezer act up and thaw a bunch of food. It made me think about adding some temperature monitoring for refrigerator/freezers in the house. But I’d like to do 4 zones and the HAI sensors are pricey for that. Anyone done something similar?

CAO wireless Tags. Send temperature, humidity, position, motion, light. Require a Tag manager that can use kumoapps (js) code to push any parameters into my ISY via REST interface. All parameters calibratable and temps to 0.0001 degree C.
 
Transmit through fridge/freezer walls no problem. Mine picks up from 1km away in car glove box. CR2032 batts last about 6-9 months depending on update frequency and bandwidth set.

 

[pete_c]

Anyone done something similar?
 
Only utilizing HAI sensors for the OmniPro 2 panel.
 
Outside the realm of HAI you could do 1-Wire.  1-Wire temperature sensors are pennies apiece.
 
1-wire combo sensors are a bit more.
 
You could connect a few of them together creating a network using a RPi 1-2-3.
 
I use a USB 9097U.  You can also connect the temperature sensors directly to the RPi GPIO ports.
 
I have a 1-wire hub in the attic monitoring some temperature and humidity on the second floor using DigiTemp and OWFS.
 
Digitemp monitoring is for Homeseer and OWFS monitoring is for WeeWx.
 

root@ICS-Pine64:/HomeSeer/Data# cd 1-wire
root@ICS-Pine64:/HomeSeer/Data/1-wire# ls
temp.txt
root@ICS-Pine64:/HomeSeer/Data/1-wire# cat temp.txt
Dec 27 23:10:04 Sensor 0 C: 3.38 F: 38.08
Dec 27 23:10:05 Sensor 1 C: 1.69 F: 35.04 H: 72%
Dec 27 23:10:05 Sensor 2 C: 20.09 F: 68.17 H: 33%
Dec 27 23:10:06 Sensor 3 C: 20.12 F: 68.22 H: 34%
Dec 27 23:10:07 Sensor 4 C: 21.38 F: 70.47 H: 28%
Dec 27 23:10:07 Sensor 5 #0 1658
Dec 27 23:10:07 Sensor 5 #1 1623
 
With the RPi you could set up zone triggers for your panel.
 

 

[BobS0327]

Recently had a basement freezer act up and thaw a bunch of food. It made me think about adding some temperature monitoring for refrigerator/freezers in the house. But I’d like to do 4 zones and the HAI sensors are pricey for that. Anyone done something similar?

 
The best price I could find on a new Leviton 31A00-8 Extended range temp/humidity sensor was $84.96. So, I went with a RPI solution.  I purchased a bag of 10 new DHT22 temp/humidity sensors  https://www.adafruit.com/product/385 for $15.00 and a RPI3 for $35.00.  This does require some minimal coding on the RPI3 but for a total cost of $50.00, I could implement up to 10 temp/humidity sensors.
 
I only use 5 of the DHT22 sensors to monitor temp/humidity throughout my home. Also,  the RPI3 could be interfaced with the OP2 using third party software such as JOmniLink.
 
I'm migrating from an OP2 HA system to a clustered RPI3 HA system simply because the OP2 system is too old and expensive to maintain.  Ultimately, the OP2 will be used only for fire/security purposes.  All HA functions such as lighting, heating etc will be offloaded to a RPI cluster.
 
To reiterate, this solution does require some RPI programming, it's not a "plug and play" solution.

 

[pete_c]

Occassionally on Ebay you will see HAI temperature or temperature / humidity sensors new old stock for cheap.
 
Yeah here reducing the number of combo temperature / humidity sensors on the second floor.  I purchased first generation 1-wire combo sensors in the 1990's (sensors are the size of my fingernail) - they sat in a box for years and wanted to see if they still worked and they do.  They were cheap back then.
 
Programming on the RPi comes from old Linux (1990's) and much is in Python such that it's been documented now for over 20 years.
 
The RPi stuff today includes use of the GPIO ports (bit banging) on the RPi which is a bit different than utilizing the old Maxim stuff.  All of the work though has been done and documented with the RPi  - 1Wire connectivity such that following directions (like a receipt) you will be up in no time.
 
You can also miniaturize it a bit more using Arduino's and making the sensors wireless if you want.

 

[cobra]

Thanks for the ideas! I also see the Leviton extended temp only sensors are in the $50 range some places. I like the wireless idea though, as it would reduce hole drilling.

This'll be a longer term project, as replacing the fridge thermostat looks like it will resolve the main cause of failure. I’ve been considering adding HomeSeer, so may go that route. And RP is an option as well. Always more to play with!