The latest gadget

I’m working on a new house project: remote temperature sensors. With a house as big as ours, I feel like it’ll be useful to understand the temperature of various places, so we can be more efficient in our heating and keep those pesky electric bills down. I looked online for wireless sensors, but they’re both surprisingly expensive and frustratingly un-useful. Most require a special phone app, and have no way to export the data.

Well, I’m a Linux geek and I love electronic gadgets, so I decided to buy a handful of Raspberry Pi Zeros (Zeroes?) and attach them to some digital sensors. Once they’re connected to our wifi, I can ping them every few minutes to collect temperature (and humidity!) data. I’ll stuff it into a database and generate some cool graphs. Even better, when we’re away from home we’ll be able to monitor things and make sure nothing is freezing or whatever.

I installed Linux on the Zero and plugged it into a monitor and keyboard, and BAM away we go! What’s really cool about these little guys is how incredibly small they are… maybe half the size of a credit card. In the circle below is the Zero: a full-featured Linux computer!

I’ve successfully written a Python program to grab the data from the sensor, and now I have to figure out how to collect it remotely and aggregate it.

It’s good to have hobbies. And gadgets.