Easy to use Household Temperature Monitor?

Jim Carroll asks: "I awoke this morning to a gas furnace that conked out. The house was 60F. We had to turn the switch off and on to get it working again. Fair enough -- but I'm worried about it going off when I'm travelling and having the pipes freeze. I'm looking for an inexpensive, simple to use temperature monitor/sensor that would plug into a USB port, that would then log household temperature to a server, so that I can view it through my broadband connection while travelling. Sure, there are all kinds of complex X10 solutions; there seems to be a few kits out there; and some high end industrial applications, but these all involve spending a few hundred dollars. I want simple, straightforward, cheap -- plug it in, and it dumps the temp every few minutes to a file. But there doesn't seem to be anything that is simple, $10-20, that is consumer oriented? And if not, why aren't companies yet making this type of device?"

Comments

Use the internal temp monitor in your PC

[dregs]

I am sure with a little bit of work you can figure out ambient temperature by measuring the temperature of your PC CPU. and working out how it compares with the ambient temperature

Re:Use the internal temp monitor in your PC

[acceleriter]

Or run a few Athlons, then it won't matter if the furnace goes out :).

Re:Cookies, beer, and a trinket

[kinnell]

...and if you really need a geekier solution, have him/her enter the temperature into a text file which you can read remotely over the web.

60 ??

[kayen_telva]

we keep the house at 60 all winter. do you actually think 60 is cold ?

Re:60 ??

[Shaleh]

maybe he is married (-: My wife has been complaining non-stop about how low I keep the thermostat. Finally compromised with 64.

Re:Cookies, beer, and a trinket

[confused one]

And that would have to qualify for most boring web cam on the web.