I'm looking for a remote temperature sensor:
-surface mount
-powered by power-over-ethernet
-monitorable via snmp or http
-with terminal leads which I can attach to an under-floor water sensor
I've been looking more at these; APC offers an 8-sensor controller/hub ($800) and a 2-sensor controller/hub. But in both cases, the total cable length for the sensor bus is 132 feet. That's pretty short. I'll need to use several controller/hubs to reach around my datacenter. They can be wall-mounted, but then I need to run power to each wall-mounted unit. That's why I'm interested in PoE.
I may have several powered Horizontal Distribution Areas where I can place three controllers, then control the sensors from there. But I'm wondering what a TIA-942 audit will think of that solution (putting environmental monitoring systems in Distribution Areas).
I ended-up getting the APC AP9320, with a set of AP9520TH temp/humidity probes. The system was straightforward to set-up, although I had trouble "applying" some network changes via the telnet interface. Once set-up with the http interface, the system is working mostly as-advertised.
The system logs events/alarms to syslog, supports SNMP trap, SNMP pollable... and will send emails for minor or major alarms (cool!). However, the SMTP email interface doesn't seem to squash a babbling condition (for example, a temperature hovering near an alarm threshold), so don't give it your pager email address!
All the probes I installed seem to be giving reasonable values. The SNMP OID for temperature only returns integers (of course... it's SNMP), so you can get finer detail by reading the unit visually or making an HTTP get. When one user is accessing the device via telnet/ssh or http, no-one else can get in (except by SNMP).
The only PoE-powered monitor I found was the Netbotz, but they cost significantly more. Other units priced in-between needed a power injector or needed a power brick for each probe, and I didn't want to mess with custom low-voltage wiring.
Another solution for you could be the Falcon Monitoring System by RLE Technologies. They design it for use in data center applications such as yours. Just something to look at...
Last edited by mlane; 03-08-2006 at 05:01 PM.
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