Placement of Temp Sensors

[Digit]

Lots of questions are crossing my mind lately about the placement of the Temperature Sensors in the various rooms. There will be sensors in the garage, kitchen, office, living room, bedrooms, and so on.

I will be using 1-Wire sensors, which are as large as transistors.

Any ideas or suggestions on where to place those sensors?

Do I have to care about the distance from the floor for instance? Does that have much influence on the accuracy of the measurements?

I was thinking of placing the sensors at 50 cm from the floor, preferably in the edge of the room, against the wall. But the lower to the floor the sensors can be placed, the less the sensors will be in sight, so 'lower is better' for that matter....

Can anyone give me some guidance?

Thanx

[Bwired]

Hi Digit,
Thats a tough question, because where you place the sensor is very important. Like the thermostat of your heating device is placed also very carefully. If you place the sensors on a position where there is a lot of draft I can Imagine that you don't get accurate readings. On the other hand I don't like to place them where you can see the wires and the sensors. So choose your places carefully. The solution in the Bwired house is the following. I use the 1-wire only for temperature readings off hot water, heating in and out, floor heating in and out, garage temp en radiator (heating) temp. For the temperature in the living room and bedrooms I use Oregon Scientific (Huger) wireless sensors, The measure Temp and Humidity and are connected to my home automation system. There is also a small LCD screen on it so you can visually see it as well.
If you are wiring the place put in some extra temp sensors for radiators, heating in and out, hot water, outside temp etc. Its easy done and does not cost so much.

regards Pieter.

www.bwired.nl Online Domotica, Home Automation house.

[stevendt]

Pieter,

could you let me know what wireless system you are using ? As far as I can see, the Oregon Scientific hardware can accept a maximum of 5 remote sensors so I assume that you have some other hardware device collecting data from your wireless temperature sensors ?

regards
Dave

[Bwired]

Hi Dave,
I saw your other post regarding 1-wire.
I said I use a lot 1-wire for temperature and counters. I also have a Oregon Scientific WMR968 Wireless Weather Station [img]images/icon_paperclip.gif[/img]Oregon Scientific WMR968 which can hold 4 temperature / humidity sensors. One sensor (main) also has a barometer. There is also a version which can hold 6 wireless sensors, the one you mentioned. So in the living room and bedrooms I use these sensors. They also have a nice LCD screen which displays temp and humidity. In all the other rooms I need Temp I use 1-wire (DS1820). I agree these sensors should be put somewhere where you cannot see them! Its easy with the DS1820 because they are very small.
I also use the RF 1-wire sensor (wireless) from http://www.rfxcom.com this wireless device can hold up to 8 temperature sensors, check out the site from rfxcom for more information.
If you need more information let me know.

Pieter Knuvers
www.bwired.nl Online House in the netherlands. Domotica, Home Automation.

[stevendt]

Hi Pieter,

the rfxcom wireless hardware looks interesting - thanks for the info.

As you suggeset, the Oregon sensors look nicer for the public rooms though so I'll investigate those further. I see that you don't seem to be using the weather functionality on BWired though, rather, you're using the Davis Vantage Pro2. I imagine that you did a lot of research on this and would be interested why your not using the data from the Oregon or the 1-Wire Weather Station ?

regards
Dave

[Bwired]

Hi Dave,
You noticed right!
At first I was using the Oregon Scientific WMR968 Wireless Solar Weather Station, I even have two versions, I also have the WMR918. The Oregon Scientific Weather stations for outside are good stations but not that professional, The rain sensor is really not good and it has to rain a lot if you want any readings. Temperature, barometer pressure and wind are all right. An other downside to the station is that after a couple of years the outside sensors are very sensitive to defects. The Davis Vantage Pro2 is a professional weather station which can measure rain up to 0.2mm and is much more robust. I'm running both weather stations, only display readings from the Davis on my site http://www.bwired.nl/weather.asp. I'm still logging both weather stations readings in a Mysql database. The Davis however does not have such a great temperature / humidity sensors THGR228N [img]images/icon_paperclip.gif[/img] thgr228.jpg as the Oregon Scientific.

Regards Pieter