Step One: The Idea

Shortly after the sparkfun free day, I had to come up with a new Arduino project.


Temperature fluctuations in my apartment always seemed like something worth monitoring, especially with our forced air heating. Right before the thermostat kicks in, the apartment feels cold. While the heat is running, everyone always thinks it gets too warm.


Sounds like a good data logging experiment!


Existing parts:
- Arduino Duemilanove (ATmega328) - Now upgraded and sold as the Arduino Uno
- Arduino Ethernet Shield
(Available via arduino.cc or sparkfun)


Parts courtesy sparkfun:
- Humidity and Temperature Sensor - RHT03
- 7-Segment Serial Display - Blue


Other components used:
1) Google App Engine
2) JQuery
3) Flot (To graph data)
4) Arduino 1.0


Project:
Create a web-enabled Temperature & Humidity monitoring system with zero operating costs. (Only cost will be hardware up-front and an internet connection)

High-level steps:
1) Interface with components (RHT03 Humidity and Temperature Sensor, 7-Segment Serial Display, Ethernet Shield)
2) Create basic interface for logging temperature events
3) Display data in a meaningful format

I will be using this blog to detail each step of the way so that it's completely reproducible if you have your own parts, and take the time.

TLDR;

Creating a web-enabled arduino project that records the temperature and humidity. Follow along to see how to do it yourself.