Nick_Pyner:
This sounds like an exercise for the Internet of Things, and that approach isn't nasty at at all. It is simply a matter of just a few lines of lines of code packaging a datafeed and sending it off to a to an outside service. This involves no Apache, no PHP, no MySQL (whatever the hell they are), and I submit that getting it all to work on your home network first would be an utterly futile exercise.
The disadvantage of using something like Xively (now owned by Google) or ThingSpeak (now owned by the company that makes Matlab) is that one is at the mercy of that service.
They can start wanting $ for what they used to provide for free.
I suppose since he claims he has lots of time on his hands then that consideration is not relevant.