TEMPer USB Thermometer w/ Alerts

by TEMPer

Product Details

• Shipping Weight: 3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• ASIN: B002VA813U
• Average Customer Review: 2.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (27 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #5,459 in Electronics (See Top 100 in Electronics)
• Date first available at Amazon.com: November 2, 2009

Product Description

Monitor the temperature with a USB thermometer. The included software takes temperature readings, records them, and graphs them. Set temperature for Fahrenheit or Celsius, and adjust the intervals at which temperature is read. It can even email you alerts when the temp goes over a limit you specify!

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

36 of 36 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Terribly inaccurate, January 17, 2010

By 

Victor (Hoboken, NJ USA) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: TEMPer USB Thermometer w/ Alerts (Electronics)

I had no unreasonable expectations about this product, since I knew it would be thermally coupled to the (warm) computer through the rather short usb cable extension, but this device far underachieved even my rather low expectations. In short, it has three shortcomings I discovered after a brief testing:

1) If you attempt to measure a temperature slightly above 37 C, it will get "stuck" at 37.00 C, which is a very suspicious property. Only if the temperature exceeds 39 C will it get "unstuck", and produce a higher temperature reading. The curve plotted by the nice software bundled with the device makes this "bug" obvious.

2) It has an obvious hysteresis: the temperature reading in the same room depends on the starting temperature of the device (if you pre-heat it or pre-cool it, the final reading is different, after a reasonable equilibration time). The hysteresis is more than 2.0 C, which is unacceptable.

3) It significantly over-estimates the ambient temperature, probably due to the thermal coupling with the computer.

On the plus side, I can only say that I love the software bundled with it, with curve plotting etc. I only wish the thermometer itself was accurate to at least 1.0 F (0.56 C), which is all I needed.

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Nice, Inexpensive Solution, August 9, 2010

By 

Gauntletwielder "gauntletwielder" (MIAMI, FL United States) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: TEMPer USB Thermometer w/ Alerts (Electronics)

For years, I have wanted to remotely monitor the temperature in server rooms. These are the type of rooms that if one industrial air condioner dies, the room gets very hot very quick. So it would be nice to know the room temperature without having to visit the site in person.

Other similar products I have looked at over the years, have cost at least $200. The misers I worked for, would not go for that.

I was thrilled to see this device at this price. I immediately ordered two without hesitation. The included software works, but it is not the greatest. I used third party software called UTAC. (USB TEMPer Advanced Control) UTAC sets up a nice little web server that displays a nice graph of the current temperature. Very nice. It also allows configuring low and high temperature thresholds with automatic e-mail alerts. Even better! No worries about temperature. I will receive automated temperature alerts now.

This device + UTAC = Great capability at a great price.

A welcome addition to our server room. No complaints.

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Does the job quite nicely (so far!), March 29, 2010

By 

P. T. Mcdonald "ptmcdonald" (Tall Timbers, Maryland United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: TEMPer USB Thermometer w/ Alerts (Electronics)

I think both of the previous reviewers suffer from a bit of unrealistic expectations. The TEMPer is $9, after all, significantly less expensive than other USB thermal probes. They advertise 2 deg C (+/- 1.8 deg F) accuracy, and my experience with two of them bears this out. All I wanted was something to get into the ballpark for remote thermal monitoring with automated notification for over-temp. This does the trick quite nicely. I also am not sure what the beef is with the included software. Although it does not provide for automated FTP upload like UTAC does, it does include automated e-mail notification, automated data logging to both text and CSV, and basic plotting all at user specified collection intervals. Also allows for error compensation when calibrating against a more accurate thermometer. The included USB extension cable serves to decouple the probe from the computer if needed. Only had them up and going for a few days but so far no obvious glitches. Is basically no accompanying documentation but was not difficult to figure out. If it had cost more I would have rated it lower, but at this price I don't know what more anyone could reasonably expect.