I have a Pico TC 08 channel thermocouple unit which plugs into my computer. At the moment I am monitoring ext temp and internal temp only, I have 6 channels free and I hope to monitor flow and return temps on my new Atmos boiler and also glasshouse temps.
To monitor temperatures, the computer is ON 24hrs and I'm a bit concerned what it will do to my electricity bill. Does anyone know of a low energy use computer at a reasonable price that I can dedicate to recording temperatures and other parameters.?
Buy yourself a plug in mains monitor - Maplin sell them, and there are loads on eBay - get the true cost over twenty four hours. Then tweak the power saving setting on the PC to minimise what will only be small anyway.
I have an eee box on 24/7 running my X10 system and a few monitoring / logging tasks also. I use a USB > Serial interface, works fine. I may swap out the HDD with a solid-state one when they get cheap enough, to reduce the power consumption / heat output even further. I have a scanner hooked up to it also, for occasional scanning tasks it's powerful enough. It's been in service for about 8 months so far, so problems at all.
Dave Liquorice coughed up some electrons that declared:
I'll second that. The Eeepc isn't my cup of tea (screen too tiny) but it is a well engineered bit of kit (SWMBO has one).
Best of all it runs linux or windows and has a flash drive (=no moving parts, other than a fan - I think...
Personally I'd run linux on it (either the inbuilt Xandros, which can have debian or Ubuntu packages added) or junk that and load eeeXubuntu as I notice the TC08 has linux drivers.
Then secure remote access (ssh) and webserving, email alerts etc are all easily doable for free :) The TC 08 is USB AFAICS so the Eee PC seems a good candidate.
I build low-power PCs as part of my business... However with low-power (watts) comes low power (CPU). No issues if you're running Linux and a dedicated application though (which I do)
But even with Windoze you can build something acceptable. So an easy start might be a 1GHz VIA C7 system - with a flash drive, I get these to run at about 15W.
formatting link
is running Linux though.
Even lower power can be had with AMD Geode systems - but they run at
500MHz, so XP might really be slow on them..
Intel Atom montherboards are a good compromise between power and CPU oomph though. I have an Atom server at home (and several other Atom systems, servers, etc.) - single core version with 2 x 1TB drives and it's running at about 42W in total.
An old Laptop might not be that good unless you can get it to run with the display off, but you can now get Acer Aspire One's relatively cheply if you look about - especially the Linux ones which people "don't get", so if you're happy with Linux they'll be fine, or slap an OEM version of XP on them.
I did some tests a while back on my laptops - the AAO sucks 27W when running flat-out with the display on. (running cpu burn tests)
Good luck!
Gordon
Ps. That's a nice, but expensive bit of kit though - £250! Although when I re-do all my heating it will be nice to monitor everything I can.
I am using some second-hand Compaq Deskpro EN systems for low power always-on requirements. They can be found for £20 now at computer fairs (actually, they're getting harder to find).
They are PIII systems, ranging from about 733MHz to 1GHz, and can take 512MB RAM, 3 unused PCI slots, on-board Intel 100Mbit ethernet, parallel, serial, USB 1.1, graphics, 3.5" IDE and CD drive, PS2 mouse/keyboard.
For what I use them for, I disconnect the CD to save power and get a spare drive power connector, max out the memory, fit a cheap low spec (5400 RPM) drive (originals are only 10 or 20GB), and fit one or two additional Intel PCI ethernet cards. I make up a lead to provide 5V and 12V external power from the drive connector, and use this to power an ethernet switch and a Wi-Fi access point. That all comes to 23W power consumption (including the ethernet switch and Wi-Fi access point), and completely silent (it has one or two fans, but they run slowly).
One slight pain is these systems won't boot without a keyboard plugged in, and there's no BIOS override for this. For a couple of them, I broke out the microcontroller from a knackered keyboard, and had just it dangling from an inch of cable plugged into the keyboard port, in a 1/2" square potting box. They can be set to automatically boot on power restore though.
I run Solaris x86 on them, but they will also run Windows XP, and I'm sure Linux too although I haven't tried that on one.
Yes, I've seen these things before. If they weren't 6 times the price of a new cheap keyboard, I might have got a couple.
Next time I make one, I'll work out which pair of the keyboard scan wires the F1 key is on, and solder on a single F1 button. Then when the BIOS says the disk's changed, or there's more memory, press F1 to save configuration and continue, I won't have to go find a real keyboard.
I said Eee box this is just a large paper back sized box, no screen. B-= )
For data gathering you don't need much storage or umph. My server is an =
Compaq 800MHz PIII and until recently had it's orginal 10GB or there abouts harddrive. Still loads of space and more than fast enough. I suspect it pulls more than the 20W stated for similar machines. It might= be 40 or 50W. I guess I could disconnect the CD and Floppy drives that don't do anything and knocka few watts off. Maybe I'll do that if I ever= have to open it up.
Yes, a CF card has the same electrical signals as a P-IDE disk. The converter cables are just that - no electronics. They can be a bit of a bugger to find - Maplin do some IIRC.
You can also get little modules with a CF socket and a P-IDE cable socket on tghe back, again no electronics. I've used these with success. SATA-CF converter modules are also available and these too work (though do contain electronics).
The one I saw pictured in this thread somewhere seems to be very good. Several people sell it, with different names/models depending which OEM path the product took, but they're identical. CPC have had it on offer for under £5 from time to time, although it's usually nearer £10-15. They do cheaper ones too.
I've tested a few different ones against a true power meter, and the only one which was way-off was the first one I bought, a Brennenstuhl one. I've seen suggestions that this is caused by having no battery in it, which might be the case. (I thought the battery was just to preserve readings over a power cut, but it may be that it gives duff readings without it.)
I'd forgotten I had one, found it in Boyz Toyz cupboard, the SWMBO chucks everything that looks important/technical in there.
It's reading between 50 and 40Watts but when I shut the monitor down it decreases to approx 32 to 35 Watts. I was looking at the Power settings, it has various things you can shut down e.g Hard discs, not a good idea if I want continuous monitoring I think. What about System Standby, excuse my ignorance, would that shiut down the temperature monitoring? the other setting is System Hibernates, same question? BTW it's a laptop Sony VAIO
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