I got 15 responses to my question about controlling/monitoring temperatures=
in an NMR facility, as usual our members came up with variety of useful ap=
proaches.
1) Tecmag has started including temperature monitoring equipment in its sol=
id state Redstone and Discovery consoles which will email high temp warning=
s and even do an automated shutdown, hopefully the other vendors will follo=
w suit.
2)Some UPS's have built in ambient temperature sensors, if the software all=
ows they can be used to shut down the systems at high temp.
3)A couple of people suggested creating their own data loggers using existi=
ng modular components or boards;
=C2=A0
http://www.arduino.cc/=C2=A0sells the modules and has open source sof=
tware to run them;
http://lena.franken.de/hardware/temperaturmessung.html=C2=A0( german page) =
shows how to make a simple sensor that can can used with digitemp software=
=C2=A0
http://www.digitemp.com/=C2=A0for monitoring
4)Sensaphone got several mentions; both the 400 telephone alert model and t=
he email alert web600 model
5) =C2=A0A more complete and expensive solution are the netbotz from apc th=
at combine multiple sensors and a webcam ( not sure my users would go for t=
hat)
http://www.apc.com/products/family/index.cfm?id=3D402
http://www.apc.com/products/family/index.cfm?id=3D400
6) A couple of people also mentioned Omega temperature systems.
http://www.omega.com/temperature/tsc.html
7) I also got a warning to make the system easily disabled if false alarms =
become a problem ( especially with telephone notification systems)
8)These suggestions got me looking a bit more and I found a series of very =
simple usb temp sensors like these
http://www.amazon.ca/Temperature-lert-USB-Monitor-Email/dp/B001KQDVB8/ref=
=3Dsr=5F1=5F10?ie=3DUTF8&qid=3D1344451851&sr=3D8-10
They need to be put on an usb extension cable to get away from the computer=
heating effects, but seem simple, reasonably cheap and do what I need them=
to do.
Thanks
Matthew Revington
NMR Facility Manager,
Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry
University of Windsor
519-253-3000 Ext 3997
Received on Wed Aug 08 2012 - 09:40:14 MST