thermal kill switch

[Ray Muno]

On Wed, Oct 23, 2002 at 05:03:21AM -0400, Robert G. Brown wrote:
> 
> A second option is to get an electronically readable thermometer (with
> one or more sensors) for the ambient room air.  netbotz (netbotz.com)
> sell moderately expensive (order $1K) monitoring devices that sample
> room air temperature, humidity, switch state (so you can get an alarm or
> take pictures when a door is opened or a motion detector detects motion)
> and have a built in camera and both a web and SNMP interface for remote
> monitoring.  It generates "alarm" mail if e.g. temperature or sound
> levels exceed a given threshold.  It is a straightforward matter to hook
> a script into one that either polls the device and sends nodes a
> poweroff command on an alarm or responds to alarm mail ditto.
> 
> If you are a DIY sort of person and don't want to pay for a netbot, you
> can build the functional equivalent of a netbot out of component parts
> and scripts.  A PC-TV card (bttv driver) and an X10 camera will let you
> watch real-time video of your cluster room in an xawtv window or serve
> you images updated every second or five on a web page -- I have the
> scripts and html for the latter already set up, as I have one at home.
> To do temperature, you can invest in an ibutton thermochron:
> 

We have a netbotz unit and it works great. I have a remote sensor that 
monitors the incoming chilled water. We usually know when there is an AC 
problem before our Facilities people do.  

For another DIY alternative, you could set up room monitoring with 
a Lego Mindstorms RCX, Lego temperature sensor and Vision Command 
USB camera.  You could do this for about $250. Everything runs under
Linux. The camera works with xawtv.  The touch sensors could be used
to monitor if the door has been opened.  (I am coaching a Lego League
team right now and I came to the realization that I could do everything
my expensive netbotz unit does with a fancy toy ;-) 

=============================================================================

 
 Ray Muno                           http://www.aem.umn.edu/people/staff/muno
 University of Minnesota                          e-mail:   muno at aem.umn.edu
 Aerospace Engineering and Mechanics               Phone:     (612) 625-9531
 110 Union St. S.E.		                     FAX:     (612) 626-1558
 Minneapolis, Mn 55455			

=============================================================================