15 thoughts on “USB Temperature Logger

  1. Maybe you could take the temp sensor and put it on the end of some wire and collect valuable temperature data on internal components of the pc or anything else.

  2. It seems like using that $5 ftdi chip is really overkill for this application, why not just use a bit-banged USB port to talk to the computer? I am not sure if there is any decent usb code out for the pic12f675, but the attiny has the usbtiny libraries which are supposed to work well.

    Also something interesting to point out, this board is essentially a usb->1wire converter, so you can add as many 1wire sensors (additional thermometers, generic a/d, even humidity etc) to the bus using a single controller board, just add code to talk to them.

    If would be really sweet it someone took the time to set up a project that uses a cheep microprocessor (the attinys are about $2) with a bitbanged usb interface that has code which recognises a few generic 1wire sensors (I would do this temp sensor, and either a DS2450 or MCP25025 a/d to attach other sensors) and automatically recognises them, and outputs their data. So you make a converter board (which should cost about $5 in parts) to as many sensors that you need, without having to configure the controller.

  3. […] great idea. It would be trivial to do with either of these two GPL projects:-

    i2c_tiny_usb uses an attiny45 and a few components to do usb->i2c converstion.
    http://www.harbaum.org/till/i2c_tiny_usb/

    This is also based on usbtiny but uses an atmega8. There are more outputs available on this one, and it uses a bootloader so USB firmware updates a fairly trivial.
    http://www.robotfuzz.com/OSIF

    (OK I admit it, the robotfuzz project its mine)

    I would be more than willing to make some USB to 1-wire firmware, great idea.

    B

  4. A quickier and cheaper aproach (also more advanced) is to use a 18F series PIC like the 18F2450 it ahs an integrated USB port and is very easy to program if you know “C” (also java knowledge is enough coz is very similar to C), also you save on pieces just the Pic, a 8MHZ resonator, and a couple os caps, plus the thermocouple or thermistor and the USB connector, it comen in a SMD version too.

  5. koray — great catch. yes, with the thermoplastic casing (as shown on the site), the LED does infact distort the temperature reading. it distorts the readings by a significant (3-4 degree) amount. when i’ve built these more recently i’ve either left the LED off alltogether, or programmed the LED to only flash very briefly (like 200msec every 5 seconds, which seems to have no measurable effect).

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