I want to get a couple temperature monitors for some rooms to help with controlling my thermostat. They can do other things, but really all I care about at the moment is temperature.
If you want a natively supported, standard device, the new (and only) SmartThings Button has a temperature sensor built in. Many motion, contact, and multisensors do too now, but you're unlikely to find any as cheap as this button ($15 USD). If you want even cheaper, the Xiaomi temperature/humidity sensor can usually be found for less, but there are some issues with those devices because they're not quite standard (one big thread on how to make them work well if you're interested and a few others too if you search).
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Apparently the new ikea motion sensor has temp as well. Not sure if it is out already
I suggest if you go this route you will not stop buying Xiaomi sensors after you get your mesh ready for them, they are so good looking, small and cheap that you will end buying more and more. But you must read how to make the mesh ready. Good luck.
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Is there anything about pricing for this yet? It does look interesting.
Can you calibrate the SmartThings Button? Does someone have a picture of the device page and the user settings?
I use a SmartThings button to monitor temperature in a bedroom. I also have a Monoprice Z-Wave motion sensor which has temperature monitoring in the living room. Below is a graph of the output from the sensors. The Monoprice is the blue line, and the button is the brownish line. The sensors are in different rooms, so some difference in reported temperature is expected (we have a wood burning stove in the living room).
We were traveling, so the house was cold (Nest thermostat "safety temperature"). You can see that the button has more frequent reporting, about every 1 degree F, or so, sometimes more often. The Monoprice is more granular. This is supposedly adjustable, perhaps using the Z-Wave parameter tool, but I haven't messed with it.
I find the button to be useful for controlling things as well as a pretty good temperature sensor. I hope this gives you some idea of its behavior. And yes, it's inexpensive.
I hope this helps with your decision.
-Scott
Question how do you generate the graph data?
This thread explains how to do that:
@muir. Thank you. That helps a lot. The reporting of 1 degree change will work for me. I need to move from wireless tags to something localized.
I was going to refer you to the visualization thread, but I was too slow to respond. Thanks @homeauto2112.
I'm using influxDB and Grafana, which are hosted on an Ubuntu machine. If you read through the thread you will see that there is some concern about the "InfluxDB Logger" app that makes all of this work. So far I've not had any issues, and the recent update which provides for asynchronous posting to the database may help alleviate the concerns.
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Thanks was hoping for something natively.... oh well....
Thanks everyone. I Think I am going to get a couple Tradfri outlets and Xiaomi sensors and some Smartthing buttons and see what makes the most sense for my desires.
Yesterday I replaced all of my Wireless Tags with SmartThings Buttons. The discovery was fast and painless and they all read within .3 of each other so there's been no calibration issues.
Update: While they do seem to update a temperature change around 1 degree, it's pretty tough to believe. I have one room where one button only updated twice in one 12 hour period. The delta as measured by my WirelessTags was 1.5 degrees. This might seem trivial, but I am struggling with it. Before I knew if the room was 72.5 within a few tenths of a degree. Now I may know it might be 71.2 or 72.9...just depends on when the update is sent.
Any direct links? Just being lazy. Don't bother if you don't want to.
We are here to help, Start with the first post, it has good info. Good luck.
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Is there any custom device handlers for the SmartThings button? I'd like to explore some options around a refresh cycle and the native driver doesn't support that. @mike.maxwell do these support Refresh capability?
As an alternative, these wintop/zipato contact sensors report temperature, as well. I haven’t released the newest version of the driver with it (I’m waiting until I get the hardware offset implemented), but it does work.
Sure, but for some silly reason I left it out, I'll add it in...
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