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Remote Coach Monitor (temps & voltages)

December 21, 2014, 10:17:53 pm

 I would like to monitor several temperatures and voltages in my coach and have them stored and available remotely.  Ideally the readings would be stored in the cloud and thus available via the internet. 

I checked on the Lowes IRIS system, temps only, but ALL the reviews that I found said the system is quite flakey and tech support is nice but clueless.

Any ideas?

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Re: Remote Coach Monitor (temps & voltages)

Reply #1 – December 21, 2014, 10:55:02 pm

I use iris and have for a while. It is much more reliable than it used to be. Not perfect but way better than not knowing.

Screen shots are just now. Also can tell if the doors are all closed in my barn.

The ones that say open or closed other than the garage doors are just door contacts lying in the water bay and inside on the counter. They report temperature as well.

Only one can be the default that shows up as "inside" temp and that's the one in the water bay that also shows a low battery.  I can log in on laptop and see re temp of the other one on the counter inside.  Open only means the magnet meant for the door jam isn't next to it.

As for voltage I get a text and an email if the power fails to the hub.  Don't know the 12v reading but I know there is 110 there.

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Re: Remote Coach Monitor (temps & voltages)

Reply #2 – December 22, 2014, 08:39:53 am

Rick... are you using the free service or the $9.95/month service?

Craig

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Re: Remote Coach Monitor (temps & voltages)

Reply #3 – December 22, 2014, 10:00:35 am

The $9.95 I think.

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Re: Remote Coach Monitor (temps & voltages)

Reply #4 – December 22, 2014, 11:58:37 am

Rick:  thanks for the great info.  It looks like this system is very close to what I want.

One of my main concerns:  Can you check the history of the overnight temperatures on the various sensors?  If so, how often are the readings made and stored?  Is it settable?

We have a Lowes about a 100 miles away.  However, I have a doctors appointment in LA tomorrow and thus will be passing right by it.

Unless I get a better suggestion today, I'll being buying a system tomorrow.

BTW:  what is the string light device?

Mucho thanks!!! 

P.S.  Sometime when I have time, probably never?, it would be fun to build my own system perhaps using a Raspberry Pi, ...

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Re: Remote Coach Monitor (temps & voltages)

Reply #5 – December 22, 2014, 12:26:10 pm

Iris kits are on sale at Lowes for 33% & 45% off until December 29.

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Re: Remote Coach Monitor (temps & voltages)

Reply #6 – December 22, 2014, 01:33:44 pm

Here is a picture of a display that is available on my computer screen (not available on the phone app.)  I don't know if it would work with Safari or not.  Seems like it required flash or something.

Last winter when the coach was stored outside in very cold weather I could see every time the heat cycled in the bay on the graph. It's in the barn now so not much variation.

You can set to get a text if the temp goes below whatever temperature you set as the default.  The sensors probably aren't very precise but they work well enough for my purpose.

As for the string lights, we bought one of those smart plugs so if we have some lights up outside we can control them via our Iphone without going outside.  Certainly no way to justify that but I like gadgets. 

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Re: Remote Coach Monitor (temps & voltages)

Reply #7 – December 22, 2014, 01:37:51 pm

The temp graph looks super.  Thanks

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Re: Remote Coach Monitor (temps & voltages)

Reply #8 – December 27, 2014, 05:55:59 pm

A quick update on my new IRIS system.  Timely because, if I recall, the 50% special ends the 29th.

For $100 the basic "Safe and Secure Kit" is a real winner.  With it I monitor 3 areas and get email notification if the unit (thus the coach) loses power.  It was easy to set up and has, over three days, worked flawlessly. 

I set it up at my desk first and when everything was working then moved it out to the coach.

My setup: 2 door contact sensors plus the motion sensor (they also include temperature).  These are ZWave devices.  Some of the optional sensors are Zigbee.  (Note the range extender is for extending the range of the sensors.  Not the WiFi.)

The Iris Hub collects the sensor information and ships it off to the cloud for storage and later retrieval.

I connected the Iris Hub to the coach wireless router which to which I have a Pepwave Wi-Fi receiver attached.  With the coach router temporarily attached to my computer (now in the house) I set the Pepwave to connect to my house Wi-Fi wireless router which has the web modem attached. 

I verified all was working and then moved the IRIS system and the coach router out to the coach and set it up.

I powered it up and it all worked.  The coach router/Pepwave linked to the house router via Wi-Fi and all still worked flawlessly. 

Alternatively you can hook a Verizon wireless modem directly into the IRIS hub.  Then the data collection is via the phone system to the IRIS cloud.

To retrieve and look at the results you login to the IRIS site (i.e., the cloud where the data is stored).  95% of the home page contains items related to all the other functions available in this home security system.  The two relevant windows are the service status and temperature.  Verify that the system is fully operational in the service status window.  The temperature window show the zip code outside temperature and the temperature of the sensor selected as the primary.  I selected as primary the water pump area sensor.

In the lower right corner of this window there is an arrow.  Selecting this arrow opens up a new page.  On this page you get initially the details on the default sensor including the graphs like Rick showed above.  Also you can select the other sensors to get a graph of their time history.

Thus Rick (I think) and myself are only using a small part of the functionality of the IRIS system.  In fact it seems it is pretty much a secret that the door and motion sensors also include temperature.  It would be nice if IRIS had a page that was tailored to it's use as a remote temperature recording device and hiding the security functions.

I still think it is an amazing capability for $100 to sense, record, and present 3 (expandable) temperatures and 115 volt power.


Accessing the data is via your web browser.

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Re: Remote Coach Monitor (temps & voltages)

Reply #9 – December 27, 2014, 09:58:22 pm

Harvey, about that Raspberry Pi, ...I like mine with ice cream.

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Re: Remote Coach Monitor (temps & voltages)

Reply #10 – December 28, 2014, 12:21:50 pm

Some more observations:

• The one day temp display is great.  You CAN look at previous one day temps temps. (just hit the left/right arrows to move between days.  Contrary to my original posing.)
• The one week display just shows some sort of average (or?) of the previous days temperatures.  I haven't explored options yet.  If the weekly display just showed the minimums of each day that would be fine for me.
• Setting various alarms for individual temps above or below a selected value is nice.  These alarms can be sent via email and/or text message.  This option requires the $9.99/month upgrade, I think.  It's free for the first two months.
• I'm curious as to whether I can download the raw data and do my own presentation perhaps in Excel.  Always lots to learn.

After almost a week I'm still very pleased with the system.  A lot of capability for the money.

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Re: Remote Coach Monitor (temps & voltages)

Reply #11 – December 31, 2014, 10:06:51 pm

I updated (i.e., corrected) my previous post.

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