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Dallas 1-Wire / MicroLan... often for weather monitoring

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Three "consider first" programs
Something different/ Something special
Others to consider

Three general purpose monitoring software packages

While the following purport to be about weather monitoring, they can also monitor other things via 1-Wire chips...

Pride of place goes to Arne Henriksen's site Arne has produced and extended, and extended and extended, software for the 1-wire system for many years. He also seems to have unlimited energy and patience for customer support. No... I don't know him personally. (Indeed everything on this page is here informally and non-commercially. Well- apart from my plug for my own software at the bottom!) Don't miss the directory of Good Stuff in the left panel, if your browser can cope with what the sort of stuff that is being thrown at it.

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You should also consider Daniel Klein's free program. To quote from his site....

"Now that many people have broadband, even if you do not have a static IP address (with a little help from dyn.com (nearly free... I've done a separate guide to why you need, how to set up dyndns service), it is easy to have your house's status available to you when away from home. Great for checking that the boiler is working properly in winter when pipes might freeze... System supports an ever-widening variety of sensors... Can alert you to "unusual" conditions via email, pager, or syslog. (Unix, Linux, Macintosh and Windows)." (End quote)

(For help with setting up DynDNS, etc, visit Sheepdog Software's FarWatch page. It doesn't cost anything beyond a broadband connection, and will run in an old PC, e.g. Win98se.)

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I haven't used Arne's software (see top of page item), but have much reason to believe it is all singing, all dancing, and eXTReMely well supported. However, if you are looking for a more modest alternative, please try my package? It may not be "the best", but it does try to keep things simple, and, for the moment, it is free! It is for Win95 and higher. Plots the past 8 days' weather, logs readings to a text file. It doesn't mind if you have hub, but won't see things "downstream" from the hub. Doesn't touch your registry or add .dlls. Config is by an ini file. THIS IS NOT POLISHED... but it should at worst be harmless. Please,Give it a try, let me know what you think? Click here for a screenshot, download button (168k), etc

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Something different / Something special

Most of this page is made up of packages to accomplish specific tasks with 1-Wire chips. However, there are alternatives. Programs for 1-Wire are not your only way to use 1-Wire. There are hardware intensive solutions, and there was a useful general tool. And don't forget: If you want to know about writing your own software for 1-Wire chips, I have tutorials for you.

Something Different

While the "real men" among us will, I suspect, tend to use or write software to interact with the MicroLans directly, there is a growing selection of hardware which does some of the work for you... at the cost of removing some of your options.

The hardware I have in mind is the devices which are built around microcontrollers, like the Arizona Microchip PIC. These devices have firmware which "looks" one direction at attached 1-Wire chips, and "talks" in the other direction via a simple ASCII dialog with the PC which wants to know what the MicroLan sees, or wants to tell things on the MicroLan to do things. There are further devices which are similar, but which interface to the host PC over a LAN or the internet. For more information, see the Peter Anderson and ITWatchdogs entries in my guide to MicroLan hardware, and my information on HW Group's Poseidon.

Something Special

Sadly, the program described below seems not to be available any more. It wasn't 100% stable... but it suggested that wonderful things might be available relatively easily. Roso might someday come out with something affordable based on the DDEViewer... probably worth checking their site from time to time.

DDE Viewer from Roso Controls, Venezuela, should not scare you off, just because of that "DDE" thing. It was a DDE server, and as such, probably took great skill to write. The 1-Wire specific code within it certainly took a lot of work... but the application was free!!

Once it was running on your computer, you could access many 1-Wire chips remarkably easily. For example, a simple formula in a cell of a spreadsheet resulted in the temperature sensed by one of the chips on the MicroLan showing up in the spreadsheet!

I've written a page with more details of DDEViewer for you. It was well worth a try.

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Other software for the 1-Wire / MicroLan network

If you want to monitor up to 8 digital inputs, and have (or will buy) a MicroLan adapter, a DS2408, and know how to put it on a PCB and connect the inputs, then I have some great software for you.

www.weather-display.com/ Software supporting a wide range of hardware, and links to a variety of weather related sites.

Tim Sailer is another 1-Wire enthusiast, and is using Linux. You can see his weather, and learn more, by clicking on the link.

PCSensor.com/ has a "Software" tab on their homepage. I believe their TEMPer1W is free, and will work on MicroLans not happening to use PCSensor's hardware. The program will plot and record readings from multiple DS18B20s. There were some other interesting programs at the site, too. I've written a page about my experiences with the PCSensor temperature monitoring system. (Hardware plus the application I just mentioned.)

I have produced a free DLL which lets you access the Hobby Boards Mini Motion detector (or any other DS2405 based sensor) easily from any serious language. The zip archive has further explanations for you.

AAG is a firm in Mexico with some interesting weather related products, and a real "can do"/"want to do" attitude. Well worth considering, especially for the splendid wind speed / direction sensor they offer. It is the one that Dallas used to sell. Splendid mechanical elements in particular. You can make your own, but why not buy something well made that won't require endless repairs? Anyway... AAG offer software as well as hardware.... some of it (all of it?) free. (The software, that is!)

Dallas also supplies software, of course.

There is Linux software for 1-Wire weather monitoring, too.
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