Linux Temperature Monitoring using the DS1820

Sitting in a 19″ rack the temperature monitoring unit that Jeroen Hoppenbrouwers built looks like it is worth several thousand dollars. When you have a look inside, the lack of components reflects on the power of the 1-wire communication technology.

“I needed several sensors. The DS18S20 was perfect for this, as this device is designed for the 1-Wire® bus system. Actually this means that you need two wires, but these two wires carry both power and data. All devices you want are simply put in parallel on the two wires, which may run for several hundred meters. The factory burns a 64-bit unique identifier in each sensor device, which enables the host machine to both list all devices on the bus and address each device individually.”