Interesting setup using an android phone

[jkt97401]

Hello all!

One of my passions is tinkering around with all sorts of technological devices, in specific I enjoy android powered phones and tablets. I was tinkering with my old phone, a Samsung Galaxy S4 and noticed that it has a temperature sensor and a humidity sensor. Who would have thought!? I have been tinkering with it and while the screen is on, the temperature sensor isn't accurate at all but when I turn the screen off and it idles, the sensor becomes extremely accurate. That, and I can calibrate the values on it so I'm happy.

Anyways, I have it setup so that it pushes updates to my phone while I'm away and it logs both temperature and humidity to it's internal sdcard!

But that's not all.....

This magical device also has an infrared blaster which means I can use it to control various infrared devices just like a universal remote. I have it always aimed at a specific area that I plan to turn into what I have began to call my "Control Panel" which will have infrared controlled sockets so my S4 will intelligently control my heat sources, humidifier and my lights! I'm really excited to have discovered I have a data logger and climate control system in 1 haha!

If anyone has any questions as to how to do this, I'd be glad to assist. There are only two android devices that I know of that have a temperature and humidity sensor, those are the Samsung S4 and the Galaxy Note 3. These devices also have infrared blasters.

Also, android devices that are not listed above will all have a temperature sensor built into the CPU (Central Processing Unit for those of you who are unfamiliar) that is normally used in keeping devices from overheating but you can calibrate it to show the ambient air temperature by subtracting the ambient air temperature read from a trusted thermometer from the reading you get on such a device while idling. You're left with the difference! If anyone is interested, I'll write up a tutorial.

Thanks for reading!