[Jaren] is occasionally forgetful, and frequently wonders if he’s left the lights on in his server room. Not knowing if the lights have been left on drives him nuts until he returns to work the next morning, so he decided he had to do something. He figured it would be easy enough to build a small sensor that would allow him to monitor the status of the overhead lights, but he didn’t want to have his micro controller’s abilities go to waste by performing one simple task. Instead, he laid out plans to add an array of other sensors which will allow him to monitor the room’s temperature, sound levels, as well as the current draw of the servers.
Right now the project is in the beginning stages, but he already has part of his sensor network established. He hooked up a TMP421-based temperature module along with a TEMT6000 ambient light sensor to his Arduino, which displays the data on a small LCD screen he purchased. More sensors are on order, so we should expect to see more progress in the coming weeks.
Hopefully when everything is completed we will see a full set of schematics and code so that anyone can buld their own server room monitoring network from his designs.
I know what plants you serving
Pot Temp? Yea, more like a grow op. :)
http://www.dipmicro.com
Same LCD for $5.62 instead of $8, and shipping is cheap. I promoted the site a few days ago also…I think they owe me a discount!
I also do not buy his story. Flow rate sensor will be added next.
I don’t see why anyone buys “ambient light sensor”. LEDs work just fine. Use a cheap red LED and you’d easily be able to tell if the lights are on. As well as having a power indicator/ status indicator…
Um, I monitor my servers temperatures directly, as well as my network equipment, UPS’s, HVAC Status. I am notified by SMS message and e-mail of any issues, and can check via the web. True, I don’t monitor if I left the lights on or not, but lets be honest, leaving the lights on in a server room means next to nothing when compared to all the other power you are using.
I too am thinking server room monitoring might be a secondary purpose for this device and not the purpose for which the device was built.
I made hackaday? sweet.
@alex – ill try an LED next
@techjoker – I agree, there are better ways.
This originally started as a “I want to work on an electronics project but I don’t know what to make”.
@DAVE
Pot = potentiometer. Reading an analog value from the “sweep” pin on a 5k potentiometer hooked between 5v and ground. It gave me something to test the LCD with… turns out it has a pretty poor refresh rate.
next up…. connectivity?
This Is a real crappy system… Look at sproutboard.com for open source rack mount arduino based sever room monitoring…
if all you worry about is whether you remembered to turn off lights you could use a http://www.telldus.se/products/tellstick with a matching wall switch (works with a range of switches) to turn off the light via cron or a webinterface.
It’s a great toy, I’m also using it to only turn on printer when theres a print job waiting, and turning on room ventilation where my home Linux server is, when it gets a little hot
@j_jwalrus
Well always good to have something to do, and that’s a good way to learn.
What I would probably do next, is add door security to the project with an RFID access system. They sell kits with cards and reader pretty cheap, add a relay and electric strike and you could add access control and logging. Sweet!
Really informative blog for Room temperature monitoring it would be easy enough to build a small sensor that would allow him to monitor the status of the overhead lights with micro controllers.