I just learned about Arduino today, and it looks like it could solve a problem for me. I have seven freezers about 200 miles from my regular office. I would like to accomplish the following:
Keep a log of all seven freezer temperatures taken about every four hours.
An alert sent to me and to several other staff by cell phone text and by email if any freezer temperature rises above 15 degrees F.
I have the following questions?
I have no experience with this type of hardware and not a lot of programming experience. Is it even feasible to consider such a project?
What equipment do I need? Can one Arduino monitor several (up to 7) temperature probes, or do I need a separate Arduino for each freezer?
The freezers are in an unheated building with temperatures dropping below freezing during the winter. Will those low temperatures be a problem?
The building with the freezers does not currently have Internet, but a building about 200 feet away does. Would I need Internet in the same building as the freezers, or is there a way to wirelessly transmit the temperatures to the adjacent building?
Will this work on Windows 7 or is Linux a better option?
I have no experience with this type of hardware and not a lot of programming experience. Is it even feasible to consider such a project?
yes
What equipment do I need? Can one Arduino monitor several (up to 7) temperature probes, or do I need a separate Arduino for each freezer?
one will do if they are located close (you need wires between temp sensors and arduino)
The freezers are in an unheated building with temperatures dropping below freezing during the winter. Will those low temperatures be a problem?
normally they should not be a problem. Worst case arduino can heat itself, but I doubt this is needed
The building with the freezers does not currently have Internet, but a building about 200 feet away does. Would I need Internet in the same building as the freezers, or is there a way to wirelessly transmit the temperatures to the adjacent building?
should be able to use wifi, but that depends on how visible are the routers from the second building
Will this work on Windows 7 or is Linux a better option?
Both. But what for is the PC?. With proper routing arduino may send data anywhere [
You may wish to look up ESP8266: its a cheap wifi module with a couple of digital IO pins which may be enough for your application. Combined with the ds18b20 temp sensor its cheap enough ($3-$5) that you can have one per freezer if you like (although multiple ds18b20 sensors can be paralleled on a single pin if you wish). Web services (eg IFTTT ,Thingspeak, xively) exist that can handle the storage and distribution of the readings so you shouldnt really need to dedicate a PC to the monitoring task.
About 1.5 years after I said that, I built and installed something very similar to what you describe. I talk to it and it talks to me from about 1100 miles away.
It is totally do-able but will require a significant intellectual commitment from you. It is amazing what we can accomplish if we 1) define what we are trying to do, 2) break the problem into bite-sized chunks and 3) never give up, change up maybe, but dogged determination really pays off with this stuff.
I also suggest you read this forum. These guys have so much knowledge and experience that they freely share and you don't really need to think up questions...most of the basic stuff has been asked and answered.