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I would like to build a temperature/humidity station with the Pi, but I need several remote sensors to distribute around my house (crawlspace, attic, various rooms where I have plants, and yes, outdoors, maybe eventually in a greenhouse which I plan to build). It'll be easy to use a different Pi with GPIO-attached T/H sensors in each location, and then use WiFi to consolidate all the information somewhere. But that's tedious (build several identical units, calibrate each one to the same standard, house and power each one, etc) and expensive (I don't really need a fully fledged computer at each location). Moreover it's complicated to power outdoors.

One other option would be to use "bricks", which could be less tedious, but that is not cheaper, since just the master and the wifi cost almost $100 (to be multiplied by the number of stations), and has similar housing/powering issues.

Alternatively, something simpler and cheaper might be possible using some off-the-shelf parts such as this one, and having a single Pi with a receiver for all the sensors. Does anybody know if a receiver for the Pi exists for this remote T/H sensor? Or better, if there is any remote-controller T/H sensor for the Pi (allowing multiple channels)? Or maybe general-purpose remote controller for sensors?

Or any other suggestions on how best to do this?

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  • Davide, while this is an interesting question, it's not on topic as per the help page. If you'd like help with specific parts of the project, that'd be more acceptable, but as is, this question is better suited to a forum.
    – Jacobm001
    Nov 29, 2015 at 3:18
  • @Jacobm001 -- Thanks for pointing me to the help. I agree I should have framed the question with less "purchasing recommendation" pitch, however "Raspberry Pi hardware, including GPIO and other related electronics" is the first item on the list of allowed topics. What I am really interested about is what hw do exist? I will be less "purchasing" and more "technical" the next time. Cheers
    – Davide
    Nov 29, 2015 at 20:13
  • The link meade.com/… isn't working...
    – loco.loop
    Aug 14, 2021 at 13:27
  • Did you ever figure a way to do this? I want to do the same thing and I want to do this where there's no internet, I could use the Raspberry Pi wifi or another solution.
    – loco.loop
    Aug 14, 2021 at 13:35
  • @loco.loop no I just gave up. If you do pursue it further, please report it as an answer here!
    – Davide
    Aug 15, 2021 at 17:37

2 Answers 2

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Not a full answer but just some thoughts:

Low power WiFi solutions such as nodeMCU or ParticleIO could be used to handle a few sensors (e.g. per room or so) and send the data to a central control unit (e.g. a Pi).

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  • Thanks, that sucked me into a rabbit hole for the day. Eventually I decided to not go that route since it's too complicated
    – Davide
    Nov 29, 2015 at 0:00
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Looks like a raspberry zero, ds18b20 temperature sensor (and/or DHT22) and wifi dongle is the easiest/cheapest way to go, at $25 (plus power) per unit and working out of the box.

Alternatively a photon might replace both the raspberry and the wifi dongle (and maybe drawing less power, but it's not clear). However it's slightly more expensive ($20 + sensors and power instead of $15 + sensors and power) and there is no documented way to use it for reading T/H sensors.

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