Tilted Forum Project Discussion Community  

Go Back   Tilted Forum Project Discussion Community > Interests > Tilted Technology


 
 
LinkBack Thread Tools
Old 04-24-2004, 07:19 PM   #1 (permalink)
Psycho
 
TheDave87's Avatar
 
Location: The Amish Wastelands of Ohio
PC to Thermostat Interface Idea

Theres a strange but mostly useful idea i've had that involves making a digital thermostat interface with a PC through USB or even serial. Ideally the thermostat would be able to interface with the PC and display temperatures on the PC and even send an e-mail alert if the temperature reaches a certain degree. The snag in all of this planning is that i know little to nothing about making things of this nature. A good friend of mine however does. My question now is this: Is this something thats even possible to do, and if so, does anyone have any ideas for making it?
__________________
Honk if you've never seen an uzi fired from a car window!
TheDave87 is offline  
Old 04-25-2004, 03:56 AM   #2 (permalink)
Irresponsible
 
yotta's Avatar
 
Newer motherboards have at least two thermal sensors on board. One directily under the CPU, and one somewhere else on the motherboard. Fan speeds and various system voltages are also usualy available.

Dump of data from my system:

Code:
VCore 1:   +1.64 V
VCore 2:   +2.75 V
+3.3V:     +3.40 V
+5V:       +5.07 V
+12V:     +12.16 V
-12V:     -12.03 V
-5V:       -5.32 V
V5SB:      +5.53 V
VBat:      +3.63 V
cpu fan:  3924 RPM
vid fan:  5720 RPM
mb temp:     +25°C
cpu temp:  +36.0°C
If you're using windows, check out motherboard monitor to read these sensors.

As to actualy making one of these, the cheap and easy way to do it is to use the joystick port, because it can be hooked directly to a thermisistor.
__________________
I am Jack's signature.

Last edited by yotta; 04-25-2004 at 04:01 AM..
yotta is offline  
Old 04-25-2004, 09:15 AM   #3 (permalink)
Psycho
 
Scorpion23's Avatar
 
There are companies that sell USB interface devices for your computer. For about $50 you can get an interface with up to 8 digital I/O ports and sample code for C++ and VB.

You can place a thermal sensor on one of the channels and some relays on the others.
Short answer is yes, it is possible.
__________________
"Empirically observed covariation is a necessary but not sufficient condition for causality" - Edward Tufte
Scorpion23 is offline  
Old 04-25-2004, 12:06 PM   #4 (permalink)
Watcher
 
billege's Avatar
 
Location: Ohio
Did people forget there's a computer forum?
__________________
I can sum up the clash of religion in one sentence:
"My Invisible Friend is better than your Invisible Friend."
billege is offline  
Old 04-25-2004, 04:15 PM   #5 (permalink)
Irresponsible
 
yotta's Avatar
 
Quote:
Originally posted by Scorpion23
There are companies that sell USB interface devices for your computer. For about $50 you can get an interface with up to 8 digital I/O ports and sample code for C++ and VB.

You can place a thermal sensor on one of the channels and some relays on the others.
Short answer is yes, it is possible.
Thermal sensors spit out analog data, though, and that has to be digitized for the computer to deal with it.
__________________
I am Jack's signature.
yotta is offline  
Old 04-25-2004, 05:14 PM   #6 (permalink)
Psycho
 
Scorpion23's Avatar
 
woops, mis-type.

I meant 4 analog and 4 digital I/O. I'll see if I can find a link.
__________________
"Empirically observed covariation is a necessary but not sufficient condition for causality" - Edward Tufte
Scorpion23 is offline  
Old 04-25-2004, 07:31 PM   #7 (permalink)
Psycho
 
TheDave87's Avatar
 
Location: The Amish Wastelands of Ohio
as i re-read this, i realize i was fairly vague... ideally this is an external unit for use in a server rack that will report to one of the servers in each of the 6 racks and e-mail one of us if that rack gets too hot. I have seen the $50 units, i was just wondering if there was a cheaper or better solution. And a link to them would be very much appeciated scorpion.
__________________
Honk if you've never seen an uzi fired from a car window!
TheDave87 is offline  
Old 04-26-2004, 02:42 AM   #8 (permalink)
Irresponsible
 
yotta's Avatar
 
Quote:
Originally posted by TheDave87
as i re-read this, i realize i was fairly vague... ideally this is an external unit for use in a server rack that will report to one of the servers in each of the 6 racks and e-mail one of us if that rack gets too hot. I have seen the $50 units, i was just wondering if there was a cheaper or better solution. And a link to them would be very much appeciated scorpion.
Well, you could hook a thermisistor up to the x axis pins on a joystick port, then calibrate it, and use the x position the joystick is giving to calculate the tempature.

I said this in a previous post, but i thought I'd make it more clear.
__________________
I am Jack's signature.
yotta is offline  
Old 05-01-2004, 05:05 AM   #9 (permalink)
Crazy
 
Location: Pittsburgh
Quote:
Originally posted by billege
Did people forget there's a computer forum?
If this was more of a computer question I would agree, however working with a Thermister analog / digital information is more of an electronic question. The hard part of what he is asking is the circuit design, then the computer.

Yes, this is possible on many different fronts, just the question is, how indepth do you want to go with designing electric circuits and then programming the interface protocol to communicate with it and then the application to communicate to your device. If you don't think you are up to all of that then the $50 solution sounds the best to me.
gigawatz is offline  
 

Tags
idea, interface, thermostat


Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

BB code is On
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is On
HTML code is Off
Trackbacks are On
Pingbacks are On
Refbacks are On



All times are GMT -8. The time now is 06:37 AM.

Tilted Forum Project

Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.8.7
Copyright ©2000 - 2024, vBulletin Solutions, Inc.
Search Engine Optimization by vBSEO 3.6.0 PL2
© 2002-2012 Tilted Forum Project

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 161 162 163 164 165 166 167 168 169 170 171 172 173 174 175 176 177 178 179 180 181 182 183 184 185 186 187 188 189 190 191 192 193 194 195 196 197 198 199 200 201 202 203 204 205 206 207 208 209 210 211 212 213 214 215 216 217 218 219 220 221 222 223 224 225 226 227 228 229 230 231 232 233 234 235 236 237 238 239 240 241 242 243 244 245 246 247 248 249 250 251 252 253 254 255 256 257 258 259 260 261 262 263 264 265 266 267 268 269 270 271 272 273 274 275 276 277 278 279 280 281 282 283 284 285 286 287 288 289 290 291 292 293 294 295 296 297 298 299 300 301 302 303 304 305 306 307 308 309 310 311 312 313 314 315 316 317 318 319 320 321 322 323 324 325 326 327 328 329 330 331 332 333 334 335 336 337 338 339 340 341 342 343 344 345 346 347 348 349 350 351 352 353 354 355 356 357 358 359 360