How I lost my greenhoue due to a faulty heater.

[fooferdoggie]

no reason to go the x 10 route now wireless is a much better way to go. I use smarthings to keep track of everything. when I open the window the fan turns on when closed it turns it off turns the fan off at the desired temp turns the main heat off too if the window is open. keeps track of temp humidity and such. doors open closed and much more with not a huge amount of cost.

[Ray]

The only potential issues with Wi-Fi devices is range and the potential of power outages.

Using home security relays and RF technology used for communicating with garage door openers, I built a remote alarm for my greenhouse, which was about 100 feet from the house. If the GH temps went too high or low, it activated a Sensaphone, which would dial my home number. If that call was not acknowledged (I.e., I wasn't home), it dialed my cell phone.

Later, I bought a LaCrosse Alerts device, which has a sending unit in the GH for T and RH, and a. Receiver in the house that connects to your router, and that sends alerts and allows you to monitor the conditions via an app.

[Caustin]

I have 8 x 20 greenhouse, that I purchased last year and it was filled with all my orchids, many of which were original divisions. I just got a propane heater put in by a local propane company before fall came but my husband hadn't hard wired it yet, so it was plugged in through multiple extension cords. Needless to say, this winter was very harsh in NJ and my husband had gone out to shovel and move snow and he disconnected the cords. I lost every orchid but one. I am still trying to find some of the orchids I have lost...I did nothing but cry that entire week! So now my heater is hardwired but am still looking for an affordable remote system that will notify me by cell. Any suggestions from anyone would be great.

[Dollythehun]

I feel your pain.

[Dumb chemist]

Originally Posted by MrHappyRotter

Well, keep in mind, I don't have a greenhouse so the little project I've worked on is proof of concept only. And I'm not using an off-the-shelf solution, I'm developing my own software/application stack based on open source and custom developed software. I've hooked up a breadboard and DHT11 sensor to the Pi, and then used the available libraries to handle sensor readings.

The idea is to have the Pi push sensor data to a remote server (something as simple as a NodeJS/PHP app on AWS) on a regular, periodic basis (i.e. once an hour, every 15 minutes, etc). The Pi has a built-in Wifi adapter (and older models can use a USB Wifi adapter), and also has an ethernet port that's all I'm considering for the network.

This way, whether temperatures are out of range or the application can't confirm that temperatures are in range (i.e. because power/internet is out and the Pi hasn't reported any data in awhile), I could still get notifications.

In a set-up like this, reliability matters, so I'd definitely use an offsite 3rd party hosting service (Azure, AWS, etc) for the server side application. That way, local power/networking anomalies won't interfere.

For added security, I've considered adding multiple channels of fail-safe notifications. For instance, have a phone app that notifies you if it can't connect to the remote server after a given amount of time. You could also put the Pi and/or various components on battery backup so that when the power goes out, an alarm could sound or emergency lights come on, but that's a bit of speculation since I wasn't planning to go that route with things.

I might suggest that you give Nagos a try if you wnat to try your hand at programming, It is located at nagios.org. Nagios is meant for monitoring hosts on an IP network. I used it to monitor a 200+ user network with 10 servers (Netware and Windows) and numerous T-1 routers.

You could use it to run shell scripts/C programs at specific intervals. Nagios can be setup to call you on a pager if there is a problem with temperatures.

[Ben_in_North_FLA]

This post is the reason, I trepidate at the thought of putting up a greenhouse in North Florida. Thank you all for posting. Still I realize that without a winter greenhouse with redundant heating and comm systems, I will have to continue the in and out of the garage shuffle for my plants. The plant count has doubled since last winter. The shuffle counter was up to 13 events, some lasted a week. Garage light very weak.