The winding road – Ravica probes used in road construction.
Everyday I find new use for our Ravica Sensor probes!
Last week I was working with a road construction company who was just awarded a contract to pave two runways at a local airport. Over all, this was a good size project and it had a few unique compliance requirements.
The company had to make sure that the outside temperature and humidity of the paving units was always below 89 degrees. If the temp went up above 89, an audible alarm and a flashing light would go off.
To be honest with you, I didn’t think we were going to be able to retrofit the paving units to supply this data. I mean, it’s not the most hospitable environment. Reluctantly, I conveyed my feelings to the customer. To my surprise, he informed me that each one of the paving units had a small building that managed the team. Each one of these buildings were fully equipped to handle the SensorProbes!
So, we spent an hour going over the requirements and hashing out the details. In the end, I recommend that they purchase a BitSight2, a Single Port Temperature and Humidity Sensor and a Siren/ Strobe Light sensor for each 
management trailer. Since this is a hostile environment, we decided to go with the weather proof option for the Single Port Temperature and Humidity Sensor.
The compliance specifications required them to store this data for review. I recommended that they use Denika to store historical data for reporting. With Denika they would be able to trend the temperature and humidity over time. They would also have the ability to set a threshold. In this example, it would be 90 degrees. Once that threshold has been violated, a syslog would be send to Logalot. This would provide all the needed data for the required compliance reports.
With Logalot they would be able to perform multi-level alarms. With this solution, they would be able to trigger the visual alarm and email or page multiple people instantly. In addition to the alerting, they would be able to search and report on the syslog data sent from the probes. I was able to show him how script could be triggered to do just about anything. In this case, we would be playing an audio file over an amplified speaker.
The client liked the solution and said that he would present it to the decision maker. I just heard from them and they are going to go with our solution!
JimmyD
Ideal temperature and humidity for a data room
Filed under: environmental monitoring, temperature monitoring
I was talking to my friend Chuck the other day about how cold it was in our office and joking about how the computers probably like it. The fluctuations we are seeing back in June was pretty wild. I emailed him the SNMP trends that we maintain of humidity and temperature.
Ravica’s environmental probes support SNMP. To make sure we stay on top of our data center cooling. There is an OID available to gather the sensor measurements such as smoke, water, voltage, etc.
“Humidity is directly related to the temperature, so monitoring temperature and humidity together is critical. Keeping your data center or IDF closet humidity levels between 45% and 55% is recommended. While maintaining an ambient temperature range of 68° to 75°F (20° to 24°C) is optimal for system reliability.”
Chuck Cahoon
Solutions Architect – CDW
Cisco Systems CCIE# 15255
E-mail: chuck.cahoon@cdw.com
Since they support SNMP, you can use MRTG, Denika Performance Trender or other programs to gather it. Check out this Denika humidity trend graph we created by polling the SNMP OID on the BitSight:
Notice above that you can highlight any spike and drill in for greater detail. Check it out, they cost about $250.00.
- Mike
SNMP pollable temperature and humidity probes
Filed under: Data Center, environmental monitoring, Intelligent Sensors, SensorProbes, temperature monitoring
Viewing trends of environmental conditions can be very helpful. The BitSight comes with its own graphical trends for displaying temperature, humidity, etc. over time.
Did you know that these appliances support SNMP and that there is an OID available to gather the sensor measurements? Well, there is and you can use MRTG, Denika or other programs to gather it. Check out this Denika humidity trend graph we created by polling the SNMP OID on the BitSight:
MRTG (Multi-Router Traffic Grapher)
Denika Performance Trender
Notice above that you can highlight any spike and drill in for greater detail.
- Mike