How to monitor fridge and freezer temperatures with Z Wave

Posted on
Tue Nov 10, 2020 10:50 pm
Dual offline
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Joined: Feb 05, 2019

How to monitor fridge and freezer temperatures with Z Wave

My freezer stopped working. It was 89F in the house. A neighbour went into the house. Stinky! All food liquified. Blech.

I have two homes and use Indigo for monitoring purposes, especially when I am away from a home. Door contacts. Motions. Cameras. Water valve. Water leak detectors. Temperature sensors. Lights. Receptacles. Sirens. Thermostats.

Oops. I forgot about the fridge and freezer temperatures. My bad. I need to rectify that.

I use Z Wave. I am looking for a way to monitor the internal temperature of my fridges and freezers. Any recommendations? I think it was @Dave17L that mentioned a ds18b20 temperature sensor in another post. What Z Wave device would I connect the sensor to?

Cheers

John

Posted on
Wed Nov 11, 2020 12:05 am
Butch2427 offline
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Re: How to monitor fridge and freezer temperatures with Z Wa

I have an aeotec multi sensor inside my fridge that communicates just fine, even with the stainless steel doors closed. The only thing I’ve noticed is that the CR123 battery life seems to shorten in the cold. I have a trigger notification to send an SMS if the temp rises above the thresh.


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Posted on
Wed Nov 11, 2020 6:02 am
DaveL17 offline
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Re: How to monitor fridge and freezer temperatures with Z Wa

Dual wrote:
I think it was @Dave17L that mentioned a ds18b20 temperature sensor in another post. What Z Wave device would I connect the sensor to?

That stinks.*

The DS18B20 is a one-wire bus temperature sensor that is very inexpensive, but as you'd expect, you need some way to get that data into Indigo. I use an industrial one-wire bus system from Embedded Data Systems and my OWServer plugin to do this. It's not cheap, but it's been incredibly robust. To monitor a fridge or freezer, it would require running a wire behind the door gasket or passing the sensor through the wall of the appliance (not for the faint of heart). If you decide to go this route, look for a weather-proof sensor like this.

There are Z-Wave devices out there that support the attachment of the DS18B20, but I don't have a good idea of which ones Indigo supports natively. That said, it would be possible to write a very simple script to trigger on a Z-Wave command from any device if you know what to look for. But you may find that Butch2427's way would work for you, too--which would be the simplest way by far.

* Couldn't resist.

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Posted on
Wed Nov 11, 2020 8:38 am
kw123 offline
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Re: How to monitor fridge and freezer temperatures with Z Wa

I have a ruuvitag Bluetooth sensor in freezer and fridge as well as one wire temp sensors connected to raspberry

Both work fine


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Posted on
Wed Nov 11, 2020 2:14 pm
Dual offline
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Re: How to monitor fridge and freezer temperatures with Z Wa

Thanks all.

Will the Fortrezz MIMOlite or MIMO2+ work with a DS18B20 Temperature Sensor to obtain temperature readings in Indigo? From the MIMO2+ user manual under Common Applications it lists Temperature Probes. However it does not give any examples of what temperature probes can be use or how to connect them. Does anyone know the type of temperature probe that could be used with the MIMO2+? I have experience with the MIMO2+ for simple applications such as water valve control and thus I would be comfortable deploying it in this situation. it would be my first choice.

Would it be possible to take Butch2427's suggestion and use it for a freezer by de-soldering the temperature sensor from an Aeotec MultiSensor 6, adding a length of wire to re-connect the temperature sensor, and placing the temperature sensor inside the freezer while keeping the MultiSensor 6 external to the freezer? this would fix potential issues re battery life and Z-Wave communication. However I did see that the MutliSensor 6 "contains an incremental temperature sensor capable of accurately measuring between -10~50°C (14 to 122°F)." Freezers tend to be colder than this however it might simply report its lowest possible reading which would be fine as long as it would report accurately when the freezer warms up. This would be my second choice.

I have done some research on 1-Wire and on the DS18B20 Temperature Sensor. Thanks @DaveL for the suggestion. It appears that the DS18B20 outputs a digital signal on its data line. There are examples of how to use it with Arduino. Arduino is an option for me using either the Arduino Plugin or simply having Arduino trigger a go/no-go condition for the temperature reading which I could then feed to indigo via various Z Wave devices. I have experience with Arduino. I have not deployed Arduino with Indigo.

One of my goals with Indigo is KISS. I prefer all devices to be Z Wave based, thus why I am looking first for a Z Wave solution here. Since my systems are relied upon when I am away for the home I need something that I won't have to troubleshoot or reset etc. Something reliable. Something simple. Something KISS.

Posted on
Wed Nov 11, 2020 2:39 pm
DaveL17 offline
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Re: How to monitor fridge and freezer temperatures with Z Wa

I've attached a DS18B20 to an Arduino using a breadboard -- but haven't tried getting the data to Indigo.

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Posted on
Wed Nov 11, 2020 4:33 pm
Butch2427 offline
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Re: How to monitor fridge and freezer temperatures with Z Wa

If you don't mind having a wire enter the appliance from the outside.... the Aeotec MultiSensor 6 can be powered by a 5v USB source. If I remember correctly, it has mico-usb port for power. Butch

Posted on
Wed Nov 11, 2020 10:26 pm
kw123 offline
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Re: How to monitor fridge and freezer temperatures with Z Wa

You can use 3 one wire sensors w the Shelly pm1. I believe

Shelly uses wifi and there are 2 plugins that get the data to indigo

Karl


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Posted on
Thu Nov 12, 2020 1:57 am
lalisingh offline
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Re: How to monitor fridge and freezer temperatures with Z Wa

Sensor Push works great for this application. Battery operated . Uses BLE for communication with a gateway.

The app work really well for analytics and notification.

https://www.sensorpush.com

Developers are open to providing an API.

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Extreme data analytics, Sensing, Control integration work.
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Posted on
Sat Nov 14, 2020 5:44 pm
shapa offline
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Re: How to monitor fridge and freezer temperatures with Z Wa

Shelly H&T is the answer. Using it in two fridge-freezers.

Two Indigo plugins exist to support shelly devices, I'm using MQTT one.

https://shelly.cloud/products/shelly-hu ... on-sensor/

Posted on
Sat Nov 14, 2020 8:38 pm
kw123 offline
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Re: How to monitor fridge and freezer temperatures with Z Wa

My experience with the Shelly ht are very bad. They eat batteries ... one every 3 weeks
I got 2 of them and have both retired.


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Posted on
Sun Nov 15, 2020 7:51 am
shapa offline
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Re: How to monitor fridge and freezer temperatures with Z Wa

Just choose a proper battery - not all are performing well at low temperatures

Posted on
Sun Nov 15, 2020 7:59 am
kw123 offline
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Re: How to monitor fridge and freezer temperatures with Z Wa

That was at room temperature.

There are discussion on the Shelly sites about it

One way of saving battery is to not use dhcp. Then the device reduces battery usage by 30%. With dhcp it needs to be up much longer. It needs to negotiate w the dhcp server to get an ip number
It also stores the last wifi access point. When that happens to be a bad choice ( bad signal) it needs more energy to connect.

The Shelly guys know about it and are trying to change the software to improve the performance.

Karl


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Posted on
Wed Nov 18, 2020 4:15 pm
shapa offline
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Re: How to monitor fridge and freezer temperatures with Z Wa

Not using dhcp for any IoT devices, may be that's why...

Posted on
Thu Dec 31, 2020 9:52 am
7rdr7 offline
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Re: How to monitor fridge and freezer temperatures with Z Wa

The DS18B20 sensor works great with the Qubino modules and is supported by Indigo. I use them for outside temp and pool temp applications.

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