Pond Boss Forums GENERAL QUESTIONS Water chemistry Thermometer app???

I'm not a huge techie, but there must be thermometers available that can be fixed in place and send temp info to a phone app? I've got a couple that work great for telling me what temp my brisket is on the smoker so I just figured there must be something out there to monitor pond water temps too. I just haven't seen them and would love to hear recommendations and experiences.

Jason, what kind of distance would there be between the thermometer and your monitoring device?

Anyone ever tried something like this?

http://www.onsetcomp.com/products/data-loggers/mx2204

http://www.onsetcomp.com/products/software/hobomobile

I've been looking for the same thing for several years. My pond is about 400 feet from the house. I had someone make me a sensor and transmitter using Arduino but it won't transmit far enough.

RobA

There are directional antennas you might want to look into. They can send and receive a long way (miles and miles).

Jason,
If you have wifi available at your pond, a simple weather station would do the trick. There are several to choose from.

Thanks for the help so far.

To answer a couple questions - No, I don't have wifi at the pond and it's about 600 ft from my house to the farthest point that I would want to monitor.

I had originally hoped I could have info sent directly to my phone, but after giving that some thought, I'd probably only be able to do that with wifi at the pond or pay my cell ph provider an excessive amount for data and create a hot spot down there like what they can do with remote security cameras.

Kap, I just looked at the links in your response. I think that is exactly what I want. I did a few searches, but had not found a device like that. Thanks! Probably go that route.

I just ordered two monitors from the links that Kap posted above. His link was to an air/water combo monitor up to 5k ft for $139. Pretty cool, but I don't really need that so I chose the water only model that works up to 100' depth which should cover just about everyone on this forum. It ended up costing $60 each (incl shipping). I'll report back once I get them in the pond.

Did you get it up and running yet?

I'm embarrassed to say "no". I have one attached to some artificial habitat structures sitting on the ice waiting to sink and the other one is going to be mounted in a spot I don't plan to access until things thaw out.

Update:

After playing with these things, I've discovered that they don't do exactly what I thought, but are definitely cool. They have bluetooth so I was hoping that I could just walk along the pond and check the temps on my ph. Unless I'm missing something, I've found that you have to retrieve them, press a button, and essentially collect a history of water temps. That's OK even if it is not what I had envisioned. I'm just glad I figured it out before the structure sank that I had one mounted on. Now I'll just attach each one to a weight/rope and collect data whenever I need to.

Cool! What does the data look like?

I'm a little behind on this, but here's what the data looks like. This is a screenshot of what is on my ph when I collect the temp history. It measures to the tenth of a degree. It's sensitivity is pretty amazing (at least to me). It shows all data since the previous download of temp data.

This sensor was sitting on a window sill instead of in my pond. I'm guessing the two little spikes late morning on March 8 are very likely when our automatic blinds raised themselves.