[Cyberspice] informs us she likes snakes. Hey, who doesn’t? She’ll soon be adopting a lovely ball python and wanted to keep close tabs on the sensitive creature’s environment. To that end she assembled a network-enabled vivarium monitoring system based on Adafruit’s Boarduino (a minimalist Arduino clone), a TMP36 analog temperature sensor, Saelig’s WIZ810MJ Ethernet interface, and a common LCD screen. The Arduino rig periodically issues updates to a web server, which can then generate informative graphs using a set of PHP scripts (what, no Python?).
Okay, so we could probably count on one hand the number of readers in need of fancy reptile monitoring and still have fingers left over. There are countless other applications where networked sensor monitoring of this sort is a frequent necessity, so the article could be a good starting point for your own projects. There’s lots of source code to work with, on both the Arduino and web server sides. And the parts list demonstrates serious frugality: the Boarduino, the generic LCD, and especially the Ethernet interface; even with the breadboard adapter, this unit is about half the cost of the usual Arduino Ethernet shield, leaving more funds available for the snake food budget!
Anyone else see the SEO?
tj, I know I’ve searched for Python and Arduino at least a handful of times. Very clever.
There’s a lot more herp keepers out there than you think. This is a slick setup
I like. I need a setup like this for my bearded dragons!
For some reason, it makes me very happy that this post is not about Python, the language.
And it’s a cool hack, too.
Very useful for my water dragon!
For anybody interested in a cheep way to monitor or control something over the Internet I bought on eBay for $25 a controller board with everything you need. Just plug it into your router, open a port and you are good to go. Check out the manual:
http://store.compute-aid.com/spec/WebControlUserGuide.pdf
Interestingly enough I have a nearly identical set-up running with three sensors for my three cages and a USB run to my comp for monitoring. Instead of an LCD I use Python the language to whip up a monitor and log. its pretty nice equipment for reptile keeping and I’m waiting for someone to productize it any day.
I came looking for Python and Arduino! Not some stupid reptiles!