I have a solar heater for my pool. Literally it's a box on legs with the inside painted black and 400' of black hose inside, sealed with glass. I have a pump in the pool that pushes the water into the box and out the other end, and that helps to heat my pool.
Currently I have the pump hooked up to an outdoor TP-Link plug that I manually turn on/off. I'd like to automate this.
Ideally, I would like to install a wireless temp probe in the hot box. Then I would like to set up a rule that between morning and evening (no sense in checking when the sun isn't around), it would check the temp probe and run the solar pump for, let's say... 30 minutes before checking the probe again to see if the box is still hot enough to do any good. Or something along those lines.
What I'm looking for now is a temp sensor. I would like for it to be zwave or wifi... whatever works with Hubitat, and I would like for it to be battery powered. I could run power to the box but if I don't have to that would be nice.
A suggestion would be to use the Waterproof DS18B20 sensor (sometimes called 1-wire). They are availiable in many places, eBay maybe Amazon etc.
The above is just the sensor (that can be in the water).
To read the sensor and send the data to Hubitat there are two options I am aware of. One is battery the other requires external power.
If you choose the battery device, investigate how often the device reports the temperature. In general battery devices cannot be "asked" .... what is your temperature. Usually there is a setting to report if the temperature has changed xx degrees. Verify this before purchase.
I didn't add a link but google will give you plenty.
Now if you are in the mood to roll your own. You can use the same sensor but use a NodeMCU Arduino board and @ogiewon 's Hubduino software (link can be found on this forum).
It goes together real easy. The software is basically plug and play. If interested there is more info I can supply.
I use a Sonoff TH16 with my pool and pool heater. works well. It does need to be flashed to be used with hubitat. And i did need to purchase a waterproof box for it.
Im thinking of getting one of the sonoffth16s for my server cabinet to control when the fans turn on. The Smartthings temp sensor has a lot of drift and i think this probe would be more accurate
So you used the Tasmotizer exe and installed it? to the sonoffth16 using the USB to serial adapter? then after that it is able to be connected to hubitat?
Sorry i am not the brightest crayon in the box so i want to make sure i will be able to set this up before buying the different pieces
Yes, You mentioned about server. I thought I also brought up that it is also battery backed up. It can stay alive when your have power outage.
It should be. I am using Bosch BME280 for temperature, humidity and pressure sensor. This is probably the best sensor there is. My DTH also have offset adjustment if you need to calibrate it further. You would get this out of the box.
In any case, If you find that you still have to use a probe, the sensor has expandable analog pin which you can connect to module like below. (sorry I posted wrong link on initial post).
Then, you can connect to K-Type Thermocouple. There is no coding need it for this route. But, you have to wire pins from module to module. I have the DTH for those to work. Thermocouple can work on extreme tempereature range.
The sensor has serial port that you can use as expansion. If you are looking to venture on Arduino development, you can do something like I just did last weekend.
