
[Cyberspice] informs us she likes snakes. Hey, who doesn’t? Shell soon be adopting a lovely ball python and wanted to keep close tabs on the sensitive creatures environment. To that end she assembled a network-enabled vivarium monitoring system based on Adafruits Boarduino (a minimalist Arduino clone), a TMP36 analog temperature sensor, Saeligs WIZ810MJ Ethernet interface, and a common LCD screen. The Arduino rig periodically issues updates to a web server, which can then generate informative graphs using a set of PHP scripts (what, no Python?).
Okay, so we could probably count on one hand the number of readers in need of fancy reptile monitoring and still have fingers left over. There are countless other applications where networked sensor monitoring of this sort is a frequent necessity, so the article could be a good starting point for your own projects. Theres lots of source code to work with, on both the Arduino and web server sides. And the parts list demonstrates serious frugality: the Boarduino, the generic LCD, and especially the Ethernet interface; even with the breadboard adapter, this unit is about half the cost of the usual Arduino Ethernet shield, leaving more funds available for the snake food budget!
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http://hackaday.com/2009/10/30/arduino-python-integration/