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Environment Sensors

What are Environment Sensors?

Environment Sensors are SNMP enabled monitoring devices. They have the ability to monitor and report on various types of environmental conditions including temperature, humidity, power and air flow as well as detect water and the state of multiple dry contacts (switches). The Environment Sensors comes in several variations with the differences being the maximum number of sensors that can be attached, web camera capability and the type of mounting.
The sizes of the Environmental Sensors are as follows:
Small: sensorProbe2 and the SensorHub2
Medium: SensorProbe8
Large: RPM and the SensorProbe8-X20 (rack mountable enclosure)

How do Environment Sensors work?

  • Depending on the specific type of unit, varying numbers of of environmental sensors (Humidity and Temperature) can be attached to the it. The sensor is monitored and the information is available via the unit's Web interface and/or via SNMP.
  • The Environment Sensor can also have various types of binary state switches attached. These switches may be monitoring such things as the opening of a door, the presence of water (even clean water), the presence of air flow or any other simple switched circuit. Such "dry contacts" are often available from Air Conditioners, UPSs, VESDA or other alarm systems. The Environment Sensor can detect if the switch is open or closed and can generate an SNMP trap when the switch changes state.
  • An Environment Sensor provides information via its built in web server that depicts the status of the attached sensors and switches. The same web server is also used to configure the Environment Sensor. Most things that can be changed via the web server can also be configured via SNMP. The complete configuration for the Environment Sensor can be downloaded and kept for a complete backup.

Once configured, the Environment Sensor's Humidity and Temperature Sensors can be easily recorded by OverTime. OverTime finds the names for each of the sensors you have configured and even the scale (C or F) used and configures the appropriate collections and OverTime configurations.