Home Weather System

[Skyscreen]

A friend of mine has a birthday coming up and said that they wanted a home weather system, or more specifically, a way to monitor temperatures (and just temperatures, no need for barometric readings or anything else) around the house. I thought about it and after a while got this great idea in my head that I should buy some temperature sensors (about 4, maybe more, I am not sure yet), and set them up to record the temperatures throughout the day. This seems easy enough, and each one could display its reading on the device itself, but I want a bit more.

It would be more convenient to have all of the sensors send their data to a central location, one easy to look at and understand. To make things even more complex, I have been slowly learning programming in C and Python and would like to attempt to make a program that would collect and display the data from the sensors on a computer, (or eventually an app, perhaps, as I am interested in learning that eventually as well).

As I am sure I know little to nothing of programming so far (as there is much to learn), here is what I'd like to know: 1) Is there a cheap solution to several temperature recording devices, preferably ones that can send data to a computer. 2) Is there an easy (a relative term) way to build a program in Python/C that would collect the data from several devices and display it on a computer. 3) At least, is there any free program that would to the aforementioned things.

 

[kanewolf]

Using a Raspberry PI and 1-Wire sensors is the cheapest way. Here is an example -- http://www.modmypi.com/blog/ds18b20-one-wire-digital-temperature-sensor-and-the-raspberry-pi

 

[Skyscreen]

Using a Raspberry PI and 1-Wire sensors is the cheapest way. Here is an example -- http://www.modmypi.com/blog/ds18b20-one-wire-digital-temperature-sensor-and-the-raspberry-pi

Thanks for the quick reply - I had heard a little about this from looking at other sites, and this link is very helpful. But, I do have a couple of things I am unsure about. 1) I know I need the raspberry system, but do I also need the power supply/sd card that it says it doesn't come with? 2) How long are the cords? I would need one of the probes to go over 100ft, as well as outside. Are the probes made to endure weather, and how long can they go?

The process of programming the system if far easier than I had imagined, and I even understand what to do for the most part. Thanks again for the replies.