Hi,
My 9 year old is currently undergoing Chemo as part of his treatment for Leukaemia. His prognosis is excellent and he is responding well but it is a long and tough journey and the treatment is at times brutal. One of the things we need to adjust too is a complex and dynamic drugs regime with visiting nurses as well as things we administer. You may also be aware that here in the UK we have been having a bit of a heat wave, which is all very nice unless the drugs you are on mean you have to avoid sunlight, and that you need to store them between 15 and 25 degrees centigrade to make sure they remain effective. To cut a long story short the coolest part of the house has been well above the range, and a desktop wine cooler was the answer. The first one I bought just kept cooling, so my wife was up through the night switching it on and off to keep in the range. This one was replaced with a better one with thermostatic control (not easy when most of the South of England had sold out of anything that cools), but the concern lingered of a second night with broken sleep.
A quick trip to the local electronics store secured a DS18B20 temperature probe and the pull up resistor, and about 45 minutes later it was up and running as a temperature sensor connected to the Raspberry Pi and running with Karl's piBeacon plugin. A while later pushover notifications were setup, a control page and a nice graph from Dave's Matplotlib plugin gave me the trend and maximums and minimums and a very happy and impressed wife.
I just wanted to take the opportunity to point out that the work of the plugin writers that I rely on everyday (Hue, Sonos, Device Extensions, Nest, Underground, Matplotlib, Harmony, Evohome [special thanks to Peter for supporting me personally with his early version] ) really makes a difference and is appreciated. In our case both parents were able to sleep soundly without feeling the need to check the manual thermometer through the night. Not a normal use case but it did make me think how much our daily life is enhanced by the contributions of these skilled individuals who donate time and energy into these efforts (and this of course extends to the ones I don't use or need).
If I ever meet any of you in person, I will happily buy you a nice cool one. In the mean time of course normal service has returned to the British Summer.
Neil