Controlling the temperature and humidity in your wine cellar
Filed under: Intelligent Sensors, SensorProbes, environmental monitoring, humidity monitoring, temperature monitoring
Recently, I was watching a home show on television that was all 
about building a wine cellar in your basement. I don’t collect wine myself, but the space was beautiful and I couldn’t help but feel a little vicarious joy as I watched the home owners hold the first tasting party in their private cellar.
If you are a wine aficionado or if you make your living in the wine industry, you know that temperature and humidity control is crucial to storing and aging wines. The optimal temperature for storing wines is a constant 50° – 55°. If it is too cold, the wine won’t mature and will taste flat and lifeless; too warm and the wine will cook and end up tasting off. Read more
~JessicaFollow Me on Twitter
Best practices in temperature monitoring
When considering a commercial grade temperature monitoring solution, which will assist with your environmental monitoring goals, I think the following should be kept in mind when choosing the right temperature sensor.
Let’s take a look at a list of specifications to consider when choosing hardware:
Dog kennel temperature monitoring
Filed under: Security Monitoring, SensorProbes, temperature monitoring
I got an interesting call today from a woman who owns a dog kennel service out in Oregon. Apparently, she wants a way to monitor the temperature inside the kennels, without running out to check the thermometers. If it is too cold, she brings the dogs inside. It sounded like some serious puppy pampering to me, but being a dog lover, I understand.
At first, I gave her a demonstration of the BitSight2 for temperature and humidity monitoring. It has two sensor ports, so she could monitor inside and outside, then view the data via a web browser from inside her house.
Avoiding water damage during floods
Filed under: environmental monitoring, water leak monitoring
This past weekend, the remnants of tropical storm Ida showed up in Southern Maine as a rain-soaked nor’easter. Fortunately, for us, we didn’t see the wide spread flooding and coastal erosion that other areas experienced further south on the New Jersey and Delaware coasts. 
Seeing all the news footage of flooded streets made me think about how important it is to be prepared for water infiltration due to flooding. According to the Red Cross, floods are among the most frequent and costly natural disasters, causing more than 90% of the damage related to natural disasters. On average, floods cause more than $4 billion in damages worldwide, per year. Proper preparation is equally important for businesses and homeowners.
Complete Environment Monitoring
Filed under: Intelligent Sensors, SensorProbes, airflow monitoring, environmental monitoring, motion detector, water leak monitoring
A soup to nuts environmental monitoring solution includes more than just temperature readings, humidity monitoring and smoke detection. If electronic equipment is in the area, it is often a good idea to monitor for other environmental conditions:
- Monitoring for water leaks
- Voltage monitoring for electrical brownouts or complete electrical loss
- Motion detection and automated photo delivery
- Airflow monitoring
Monitoring Temperature in Healthcare Environments
Filed under: Intelligent Sensors, SensorProbes, environmental monitoring, temperature monitoring
Recently, I had the opportunity to visit a family member in the hospital who had just delivered twin girls. The babies came several weeks ahead of schedule, and although they were both healthy, we were told that they were going to need to be in the NICU for several weeks.
After spending hours visiting the hospital, surrounded on all sides by the constant noise of beeping monitors, I really began to appreciate the precision under which the modern hospital is run. It is a finely tuned machine and temperature monitoring is an extremely important part of the operation of that machine. In fact, one of the main reasons that the twins needed to stay in the hospital was that they hadn’t developed the ability to self-regulate their own body temperature. They needed to be in the temperature-controlled environment of the incubator. The entire room in which they were staying also needed to be kept at a precise temperature for the times when they were outside the incubator, bonding with their mother.
Temperature monitoring during the winter months
Filed under: Intelligent Sensors, environmental monitoring, temperature monitoring
With winter just around the corner, those of us in the more northern locations (the Ravica offices are located in Southern Maine) begin preparing for cold temperatures in a variety of ways. Whether you’re just sealing the windows to keep the cold air outside, where it belongs, or selling all of your most prized possessions on Ebay to cover the home heating costs for the impending months, it is important to get a jump on these preparations.
Thoughts From the New Girl. . .
Filed under: environmental monitoring, temperature monitoring
Hey, I’m Jessica and I’m new here at Ravica. As I’ve been learning about the Ravica product line for environmental monitoring, I can’t help but think back to some situations where having this type of equipment in place would have been a real lifesaver.
In a previous life, I worked in the building maintenance department at a small university on the west coast. My job was basically to take all the calls from across the campus when stuff went wrong, and then send someone to fix the problem.
One of the frequent calls I received had to do with the walk-in coolers and freezers in the main dining hall. It seemed like those things were always going down, and the dining hall had hundreds of hungry college students to serve three times a day — this was a major problem!
Ravica SecurityProbe Picture Log
Filed under: Intelligent Sensors, Security Monitoring, SensorProbes, motion detector
Today, I started working with a software company who wanted to keep track of their employees that work very early or very late hours. In
general, it wasn’t a bad thing. They just wanted to make sure that the people coming into the building to work, were the people that should be. This company had already purchased monitoring and security equipment from us in the past.
This company just added a new international sales department. The work hours for the new employee were going to be 4:00am to 1:00pm. They wanted to know if they could utilize the picture log to record when people go in and out of the front door. They also wanted to limit the time frame for these pictures.
I did a bit of research and found out the answer was yes! You can set a time frame on the camera motion sensor and you can have the picture emailed or stored on the FTP server. Now, they would get an alert and a picture when someone came through the door.
At this point, they could figure out who came through the door. They then wanted to know if too many people were going through the door during the early morning hours. To do this, we used a Syslog/Eventlog application that allows you to set a threshold. Each time an image was taken with the camera, an alert would be sent to the Syslog/Eventlog manager. If a threshold was met, let say five, then an email would be sent to the security office.
The customer was excited and wanted to implement this in the coming weeks. I can’t wait to see how it comes out.
-Jimmy D
Camera’s lend environmental reassurance
Filed under: Security Monitoring, airflow monitoring, environmental monitoring, humidity monitoring, motion detector, temperature monitoring
When it comes to monitoring the data center environmental conditions, we receive questions which pretty much cover the gamut. From staples, such as monitoring temperature or humidity, to measuring more difficult ambient conditions, such as airflow.
We also receive calls about security. This is something we can cover in a few different ways:
- Using a contact security sensor on all doors or windows.
- Motion detectors have been the topic of a few blogs.
- We can install strobe lights that can indicate security breaches.
- We can also install security cameras, which take pictures based on movement.