I feel like using RethinkDB, instead of something like SQLite (or if you absolutely insist on NoSQL, maybe LevelDB or BerkeleyDB) kind of seems like using a supertanker for a tugboat's job. Especially if you're going to write your temperature sensor logger in Python, and it's just being used as an embedded application, SQLite really seems like one of the smarter choices you could make there. Maybe the point is to demo RethinkDB features, but wouldn't it make sense for the Python script to also emit the status data and send notifications as well, without needing all those extra Node dependencies?<p>Also, maybe I'm just crazy, but man I can't believe people are encouraging others to curl stuff from the internet right into a shell. Especially on Raspian where the default Pi user has NOPASSWD in sudoers, this seems like a bad practice that we shouldn't encourage.
I went overboard with my Raspberry PI and temperature sensors a couple of years ago. I hooked a bunch of sensors up to old wiring in the house that a previous owner had used for a security system. And while I was at it, I hooked up an old crank-telephone so I could remotely ring the bells, play "The Raspberries" on the handset, etc. It's not all operational anymore, but the DS1820b temperature sensors are. It's surprising how sensitive they are. By watching a graph, you can see when the heater or AC runs, when someone takes a shower, when the garage door opens, when a car is in the garage, etc.<p><a href="http://buzbee.asuscomm.com:8100/" rel="nofollow">http://buzbee.asuscomm.com:8100/</a>
I have to say, I accomplished all this with a simple bash script in about 60 minutes or less. Using a sledgehammer like Rethink for something that can be easily handled with a text file and logrotate is just...overkill. I understand that it's a rethink blog, but I completely finished the project in less time that it took him to compile the database.
I recently set up a raspi to monitor my wine cellar temperatures. If you're looking for a 3rd party solution, check out librato [1]. We use them at work and they're really great. I hooked temperature readings up to librato and set up threshold alerts within a few min without ever having used their python api before.<p>[1] <a href="http://librato.com" rel="nofollow">http://librato.com</a>
hardware guide I used: <a href="https://learn.adafruit.com/dht-humidity-sensing-on-raspberry-pi-with-gdocs-logging?view=all" rel="nofollow">https://learn.adafruit.com/dht-humidity-sensing-on-raspberry...</a>
This brings up one annoying aspect of the Raspberry Pi, it's pretty difficult to get GPIO access without root.<p>I built a temperature sensor for a server rack [1], and went with an ATMega328 and an ENC28J60 ethernet module, and it just serves JSON of the four DHT11 sensors connected to it.<p>[1] <a href="https://jacklew.is/arduino-temp-sensor/" rel="nofollow">https://jacklew.is/arduino-temp-sensor/</a>