chep snmp temperature sensors

Wed Apr 23 03:48:38 UTC 2003

They're hard to find, at least inexpensively.  I've found several 
systems for >$700 that have some nice features, including cameras 
(http://www.rackbotz.com/) and multiple wireless measurement systems 
(http://www.microstrain.com/WWSN.html) but they've all been slightly 
out of range in the cost department, or have been aimed at a 
different market than what I was looking for.  Using the Cisco 
temperature MIB has been pretty much the standard to this point.

After some extensive hunting a while ago, I found this:  These guys 
make a nice (fairly) inexpensive module that I think wins the 
competition.  It has a large number of measurement and switch inputs, 
runs a number of relays (built in) and seems to be fairly 
customizable.  The bad news: it's not "native" SNMP and requires some 
sort of little C or Perl module to do screen-scraping.  The vendor 
provides a sample MRTG script, so it can't be that hard.

   http://rms.nethop.net/

$395 plus a lot of features, including running on minimal voltage.

I haven't purchased one of these yet, but they're close to what I've 
needed several times in the past, and I'm looking for excuses to 
purchase a few.  Any of you who pick one up, I'd appreciate it if you 
could send feedback to me personally.  It seems to me that there 
still is not any widely-advertised, inexpensive temperature gauge 
that is network-accessible (SNMP) which is surprising considering the 
amount of damage that can be done via overheating in a datacenter.

[Note: before I sent this, I read Robert Boyle's followup message, 
which has some interestingly low-priced alternatives.  Perhaps I have 
been looking in the wrong places.  In any case, the RMS device has 
some additional features that may make it worth examining for the 
remote or low-voltage wireless sites that are starting to appear with 
some frequency here in in the Pacific Northwest American area.]

JT

>I've searched the archives, and didn't see anything current.
>
>I am looking for a small, cheap, simply device, that can measure temp and
>be polled via SNMP. POE would be a plus.
>
>Any pointers?
>
>
>-- Alex Rubenstein, AR97, K2AHR, alex at nac.net, latency, Al Reuben --
>--    Net Access Corporation, 800-NET-ME-36, http://www.nac.net   --