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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?"

3 of 106 comments (clear)

  1. warning slashdot tracks anonymous ! tsarkon by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic
    WARNING, SLASHDOT NOW TIES AC COMMENTS WITH USER
    (Use a disposable account from a disposable IP before moderating this up. Editors generally watch and see who moderates controversial things like this up.)

    When you are logged in, /. ties your user account to any Anonymous Coward postings you make... Thus they know who posted it. To demonstrate this:
    1. Get mod points.
    2. Post an AC comment while logged in
    3. Change your dynamic ip, clear all cookies
    4. Log back in and try to moderate your AC comment... you can't!!!

    Please *log out* AND use another browser before making your AC comments.
    Your UID is being tracked, it's not Anonymous. Lots of people post lots of things to Slashdot as AC only because they believe it is really anonymous - it isn't. They hunt "trolls" (non-karma whores and non-group thinking bots) down.

    This is true. I used to be a bit more freestyle and witty AC and be a nice guy logged in [basically a karma whore]. After a short while, I could no longer moderate. Slashdot does brand AC posts with IP and then map them back to users. They lie about AC, AC doesn't exist if you re-use ip addresses.

    Big brother is watching. So while I might be a "troll" a lot of the AC things I said were to protect myself from Slash-bot groupthink. They punished me for voicing my opinion freestyle.

    They also revoke moderation FOREVER - $rtbl it is called, for any moderations of any post that have been secretly flagged annoying [Slashcode has hidden flags viewable by editors]. If you *EVER* mod up something an editor secretly marked annoying you NEVER moderate again, ever - ever even if your karma is capped.

    Also, Slashdot uses the friends system to track "trolls." Mark a troll you find funny as a friend *bang* $rtbl never to moderate ever again. My real account had many many good friends who had good karma, and a few funny trolls later, no more moderation for that account. Again, Slashdot is spying on its users to make the people who find certain things funny uneligible to moderate. You will never moderate again if you are a friend of a "foe or freak" of an editor.

    FACT: This is in Slashcode CVS

    Revision 1.7.2.5 / (download) - annotate - [select for diffs] , Thu Feb 8 13:12:32 2001 UTC (2 years, 9 months ago) by pudge
    Branch: bender
    CVS Tags: v1_1_3_0
    Changes since 1.7.2.4: +18 -7 lines
    Diff to previous 1.7.2.4 to branchpoint 1.7

    log more AC info


    So AC is a scam here. Hitler-Malda screws AC posts in the caboose. So now all you can do is go 100% AC, or , as they expect you to, KARMA WHORE. And it is so lame and unfair and probably illegal as they lie about anonymity.

    Also, sometimes when certain information becomes an active thread, they bitchslap the thread much later so that people think its "safe" to participate and the whole thing gets slapped.

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    Protect yourself. Try and use proxies or a super good second browser with proxies that you never log into such as Opera (which makes it very easy to delete all private data). Thank you.
    1. Re:warning slashdot tracks anonymous ! tsarkon by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic
      FREE THE WORLD. Information wants to be free. free the world! SCREAM FREEDOM from TYRANNY like WILLIAM WALLACE IN BRAVEHEART! FREEEEEEEEEEEEEDOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!!! We cry for freedom from tyranny here like we gasp for air!

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      He never gives up. He'll stay 'til the fight's won. /. Joe will dare.

      /. Joe- A real American hero! /. Joe

  2. Very useful by isorox · · Score: 1, Offtopic

    so that I can view it through my broadband connection while travelling

    So you find out your pipes are in the process of freezing, but havent frozen yet. You're in Japan. what you gonna do?