An Ethernet temperature sensor allows you to easily track the temperature at your remote site or in your data center like you would check on any of your Ethernet equipment. It is a small but potentially powerful and integral part of a network monitoring system, helping you monitor and protect your extended network.

How the temperature sensor works

A temperature sensor monitors a range of voltage, with a thermistor – a small resistor that provides resistance that can be calculated based on its temperature – providing a resistance. Because the thermistor provides resistance based on temperature, the voltage output measured by the sensor can be used to calculate temperature.

When configuring your Ethernet temperature sensor, you'll setup some means for the sensor to communicate data directly to you. While most sensors have a web interface that you can use to view live readings from the sensor, this is not terribly convenient; you probably have better things to do with your day than staring at the readings on your temperature sensor.

A temperature sensor can alert you to HVAC equipment failure before your equipment is damaged, so you can act quickly either to get your HVAC equipment back online or shut down equipment to prevent damage.

So, you'll likely setup SNMP Traps, unsolicited messages sent from your Ethernet sensor to your SNMP manager. You can have traps sent from the sensor on a regular interval for trending purposes. Or, you can reduce the network traffic required by the Ethernet temperature sensor by setting threshold values at which the temperature sensor should notify you. The better temperature sensors out there will allow you to set four alarm thresholds – major under, minor under, minor over, and major over – at which point the temperature sensor will alert you, so you'll know when you have a problem. For example, if you set the minor over value for a temperature sensor at just above the set point for your air conditioning systems at a site with temperature-sensitive equipment, and you receive the minor over alarm, you'll know that the air conditioning systems at the site have malfunctioned.

Remote Telemetry Units Consolidate Monitoring at the Site Level

However, while all of this is convenient for measuring temperature at home or at an extremely small site, you may wish to monitor other things at your site in addition to temperature or temperature in multiple areas in the site, as you might do with in a data center. To greatly increase your monitoring capacity, you may wish to install a remote telemetry unit (RTU). The better remote telemetry units out there can monitor temperature sensors at your site in addition to a number of discrete points, additional analog sensors (temperature, humidity, fuel level, etc.), and provide controls relays to operate equipment remotely, all over LAN. The RTU gives you more bang for the Ethernet port that you were simply using for temperature monitoring.

Consolidating monitoring at your site into a single RTU, rather than having multiple Ethernet sensors strewn about, brings all of your monitoring under a single interface. A good RTU will offer the same SNMP trap capabilities as your Ethernet sensors, so you'll still receive SNMP notifications for alarms and trending values, but you'll receive them all from a single source, so there's no wondering about the meaning and location of point references. Even better, a good RTU can send email notification for alarms, so you can know what the temperature is at your site from wherever you are.

A NetGuardian RTU is a full remote monitoring solution, monitoring temperature/HVAC equipment at your site in addition to your other equipment's discrete contacts.

An RTU like the TempDefender from DPS Telecom provides Ethernet access to up to 16 analog sensors, for temperature, humidity, fuel level, or any other values you could hope to measure. Sensors from the TempDefender are daisy chainable as well and can run up to 600 feet from the unit, farther than most stand-alone Ethernet sensors, so there's no worry about placement or the distribution of Ethernet ports at your site. Wherever you need to monitor temperature by LAN, the TempDefender offers an inexpensive alternative to the standard Ethernet temp sensor with greater functionality.

The TempDefender IT is a complete environmental monitoring solution, monitoring temperature, humidity, air flow, and other qualities at your remote sites.

The Alarm Master Puts All of Your Temperature Alarms on One Screen

As your network grows, and you find yourself measuring temperature across multiple sites, you'll want a means to capture all of your captured temperature and other data. While an RTU does consolidate monitoring at the site level, multiple RTUs across the network will make monitoring temperature confusing, and when a temperature alarm sets off, you can't afford to waste time associating IP addresses and point references with the right site, nor can you afford to be mistaken.

A manager to capture temperature and other alarms will help you effectively manage your network. T/Mon can consolidate temperature and other alarms from any protocol, legacy, proprietary, or otherwise, bringing all of your alarm and monitoring data, including anything captured from Ethernet temperature sensors, on to a single interface.

Like your RTU, it can also provide notification for your temperature threshold alarms. However, more sophisticated master stations allow for organized and progressive notification schemes. When a temperature threshold alarm is crossed, your better master stations, like the T/Mon platform from DPS Telecom, can send email, text, pager, or, with the SiteDialer accessory, voice notification to a technician. If the primary technician does not acknowledge the notification, T/Mon can roll the notification over to other technicians, so no Ethernet temperature threshold alarm goes unnoticed.

Your better SNMP masters can color-code all of your Ethernet temperature sensor thresholds on a map, so when a threshold is crossed, you'll know at a glance where you have a problem and just how severe it is. T/GFX, the geographical interface for T/Mon provides just this sort of interface. You can use it to view your temperature sensors at large or "drill down" to lower levels of the map, all the way down to the floor plan view, so as you monitor larger sites, like data centers, you can see exactly where your HVAC systems have failed.

The Graphical interface for T/Mon provides a map-based interface for all of your sites, from your network at large, all the way down to the floor plan at your sites.

You can even use the T/GFX interface to access the individual interfaces of your temperature sensors or, better RTUs on site. With direct access to your equipment on site, you can activate available control relays connected at your site to alleviate temperature alarms without making a trip out to a site. You can turn on air conditioning equipment or shut down equipment in danger of becoming damaged to high temperatures, from your desk chair with a combination of temperature sensors, RTUs, and the master station.

Ethernet temperature sensors are just a small but integral part of a robust monitoring network. As you search for Ethernet temperature sensors to for your network, you may want to consider RTUs or a master station to better maintain your network.

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Data Center Cooling