Hi all, first time on the forums.
Bought a pair of emonTX's and an emonGLCD a while back and I'm (finally) getting around to finishing and installing them.
I've planned to lay a string of one-wire DS18B20 temperature sensors around the house, one in each room, but I've managed to come up with yet another silly reason not to finish:
Where is best to position permanent temperature sensors in a room ?
My initial thoughts were to piggy-back off the light fittings. They're roughly central to the room, and would keep the wires out of sight for the most part. But then I though the light bulbs will affect their readings (CFL bulbs still warm up the air around them, and even LED bulbs leak a little heat.
I couldn't find any discussion of where people actually put these, or anything really relevant on the wider internets.
Am I over thinking this and should I just run them up a corner wall and have done with it?
Re: Temperature sensor location
What temperature do you want to measure? It might sound like a silly question, but if it is on an outside wall, the reading will be influenced by the outside temperature and the wall's thermal properties. If it is hit by direct sunlight or over a radiator, the effect is obvious. I think you want the representative air temperature at the height you are when occupying the room, probably about 1 m above floor level for a living room or bedroom, probably higher for a utility room. If there is good air circulation and little heating, the height will make less difference. In still air and with heating, there is a considerable difference between floor level and ceiling.
Time for some experiments, methinks.
Re: Temperature sensor location
That's exactly the kind of thing I hadn't considered but felt somewhere in the back of my mind.
I'm grabbing the the serial numebrs from all the sensors I've got, then I'll start thinking about body-level positioning in each room and try some experiments.
Re: Temperature sensor location
In general the same locations you would want to put a Thermostats. Google good thermostat locations and you should find a lot of good info.
Re: Temperature sensor location
hi - I am also going to do a 1-wire temperature network. I want to stick some sensors in my external wall cavity (double brick house) prior to having insulation retro-fitted. I thought it might be interesting to get some before and after idea of the effect of insulation. Are you planning on using an emonTx as the 1-wire bus master? I was, but I'm now considering using a hardware bus master like the ds9490r. It seems likely to work better with long networks, but it would mean working out how to move data from owfs to emoncms. Anyway it would be great to hear how your network goes and how you build it.