Mounting ideas for temperature sensors?

[sarain]

I'm excitedly working towards getting my systems set up. As part of this set up, I bought a bunch of the waterproof stainless encased DS18B20 1-wire temp sensors to connect to my GEMs and install around the house.

One detail that I didn't initially appreciate is that these sensors would seem rather odd just sticking out of a hole in the wall or ceiling. I want to make sure they measure the room temperatures more than the wall temperatures but I don't want them just hanging freely. Does anyone have any cool cases or mounting ideas you've used or come across?

Also, I'm still trying to decide where to put them within each room. Should they go out of view near the floor, up near/on the ceiling, somewhere closer to sitting/standing height, on interior walls or exterior walls, etc.

I am interested to hear other people's experiences setting up these sensors (or other temperature sensors) in their own homes. What factors did you consider when deciding where to place them? Are you happy with the results? Anything you would do differently if you were to start over?

Obviously the specific ideal layout and positions will be unique for me vs someone else, but hopefully there are still some useful tips that apply more generally.

[Teken]

I'm excitedly working towards getting my systems set up. As part of this set up, I bought a bunch of the waterproof stainless encased DS18B20 1-wire temp sensors to connect to my GEMs and install around the house.

One detail that I didn't initially appreciate is that these sensors would seem rather odd just sticking out of a hole in the wall or ceiling. I want to make sure they measure the room temperatures more than the wall temperatures but I don't want them just hanging freely. Does anyone have any cool cases or mounting ideas you've used or come across?

Also, I'm still trying to decide where to put them within each room. Should they go out of view near the floor, up near/on the ceiling, somewhere closer to sitting/standing height, on interior walls or exterior walls, etc.

I am interested to hear other people's experiences setting up these sensors (or other temperature sensors) in their own homes. What factors did you consider when deciding where to place them? Are you happy with the results? Anything you would do differently if you were to start over?

Obviously the specific ideal layout and positions will be unique for me vs someone else, but hopefully there are still some useful tips that apply more generally.

This really comes down to use case and the ability to install the sensors correctly in their final resting place. My sensors are placed strategically in zones where I needed to know the exact air temperature of the room.

Whereas others were intended to measure direct surface temperatures such as pipes, heaters, ground, water, etc.

Its important to note proper isolation of the metal sensor tip with a insulator is paramount if you seek true environmental monitoring. I used isolation o-ring foam intended for just that purpose which is technically used to reduce frame vibration.

Any sensor that was going to measure a room was installed at the *Human Level of no less than 2~5 feet from the ground. Only sensors mounted high up in the ceiling were intended to monitor how much wasted heat was at the ceiling level which helped my home automation system to either run the central exhaust, ceiling fans, or zoned fans.

Depending upon season the fans would be reversed to push the hot air into the living space. Any area that was colder than the required space would have suction fans to divert the heat to the needed area. In the summer the reverse would happen and if it was too hot the central exhaust, over head range, and other fans would remove as much hot air outside to keep the home cool.

Because I live in the cold north several large fans suck the cold air from the basement and gets pushed up the stairs to keep the main floor stable and comfortable.

So for me there are four sensor arrays which monitor: infrastructure, outside, interior living space, and fire protection.

One thing to note is to test, validate, and monitor each sensor for low, mid, high temperature extremes so the values seen are consistent with one another. The GEM only supports 0.5 resolution so that means a sensor that is tipping over from 2 could show up as 1.5 vs 2.0. My OCD would not allow this so I took the time to place each sensor in boiling hot water, thermal heat gun to placing them into (embedded) frozen ice cube trays in a freezer.

This let me see both extremes and the values that were presented by the GEM. Any sensor that did not match in pairs were moved to another location or not used. I have 16 GEM sensors which all match down to 0.5 of each other meaning if its 20.0'C.

All sixteen 1 wire sensors show 20.0'C, if its -45'C each one shows the very same!