Smart Home and IoT – Dirk Paessler's Personal Blog

CO₂-Monitoring: Gegen schlechte Luft im Klassenzimmer

Der CO₂-Gehalt der Luft im Klassenzimmer verrät uns wie viele böse Aerosole in der Luft sind – und damit auch wie viele Corona Viren in der Luft sein könnten. Durch Beobachtung des CO₂ Wertes weiß man, wann man lüften muss. Und überhaupt lernt es sich mit unverbrauchter Luft viel besser, das sagen Lüftungs-Experten schon seit vielen Jahren – denn zu viel CO2 macht tatsächlich müde.

Daher gibt es das Pilotprojekt der Paessler AG zur Messung von CO₂- und anderen Raumluftwerten an der Montessori Schule Herzogenaurach.

Alles weitere im Blog der Schule:

Update: Monitoring the global CO₂ concentration, Earth’s most important metric, with PRTG

In March 2019 I wrote a blog post about a new sensortype for PRTG Network Monitor that allows users of this software to keep an eye on the CO₂ concentration of the atmosphere. My idea was to create more visibility for this important metric by adding this sensor to dashboards of the monitoring software PRTG.

Today an update of this sensor was published.

Why is the CO₂ level so important?

How to Monitor Zehnder ComfoAir Q Ventilation Units with PRTG Network Monitor

In our house we have two ventilation units from Swiss/German vendor Zehnder, one ComfoAir Q600 and one ComfoAir Q350. Since most of our energy and house tech systems are already monitored by my PRTG instance (including solar system and heatpump) to be shown on my dashboard, I also wanted to monitor our ventilation system, too.

Which turned out to be harder than expected…

How to configure a Microsoft Surface Go tablet as a home dashboard in our pantry (with PRTG)

In this article I am documenting how I use a Windows tablet (Surface Go) as always-on monitoring dashboard in our house. Upon power-up the dashboard automatically logs into Windows and starts a chrome browser with a dashboard-map of my PRTG Network Monitor account. This is an updated version of the dashboard screen that I also run on my desk.

Comparison: Seven devices between €69 and €500 for monitoring environmental parameters like temperature and humidity with PRTG

As the founder of “The network monitoring company” Paessler AG it came quite natural to me to not only monitor our home network but also various environmental metrics in our family home. We had moved into our new home a year and a half ago and having temperature data series has been quite helpful to do the fine tuning and bug-fixing of the heating and venting systems.

I am not so much a maker person like my colleagues who built their own smart thermometers for our office building. I like to use prefabricated devices. So I ordered 6 different out-of-the-box devices (mostly from Amazon) to monitor temperatures etc. in our house. I connected all these sensors to my PRTG installation which also monitors the heating system and solar panels via ModbusTCP and many other systems of the house.

Read on in my blog post on the Paessler company blog.

How I monitor my garage door for €69 (and without access to power and wifi)

Every other night we forgot to close our garage door in the evening and it stayed open all night. Obviously we needed a door monitoring that alerts us whenever the door was left open after 20:00. There were just two tiny problems: There was no close-by power outlet or ethernet port and the steel enforced concrete structure of our garage shielded off our home wifi networks.

In this article I will describe a solution which is based on the Sigfox IoT wireless network and PRTG which I use to monitor our home.

How to Monitor all available Wifi Networks and their Signal Strengths with PRTG (Custom Sensor Script)

In this article I will show how to monitor all available wifi networks (SSIDs) and their signal strength using PRTG.

The Basics of Modbus Monitoring with PRTG Network Monitor (With Custom Sensor Script)

Article explains how Modbus/TCP works and shows how to monitor Modbus/TCP enabled devices with PRTG Network Monitor

The Modbus protocol has been around forever (since 1979 to be exact) and is used by many industrial systems, but also energy systems like heat pumps and solar converters. Initially it was used via serial communications, then – in 2007 – a TCP based version was created that communicates via TCP, usually using port 502.

The following article explains how Modbus/TCP works and shows how I can monitor Modbus/TCP enabled devices with PRTG Network Monitor using a simple PowerShell script.

I wish I could share a one-size-fits-all script that just works for most people. But unfortunately this task usually requires some hacking and coding…

Monitoring solar panels and our home’s energy usage/mix via Modbus using PRTG (ft. SMA Sunny Island and SMA Sunny Tripower)

We have solar panels on our roof which are able to generate a peak power of 10 kW. An energy controller controls the converter, our heat pump and our battery with the goal that most of the solar energy is used locally. First we use the solar energy in our home, we charge the 230V-battery, and we load the heat storage tank. Only if even more solar power is generated we send the rest into the grid.

To visualize this and I am monitoring this system with PRTG using the Modbus protocol.

Alpha Innotec Wärmepumpe via ModBus mit PRTG überwachen

Wir heizen unser Haus mit einer Sole/Wasser-Wärmepumpe SWC 25 von Alpha Innotec (AIT). Dieser Artikel beschreibt, wie man diese über das ModBus-Protokoll mit PRTG überwachen kann.