Monitoring temperature and the environmental status in remote sites

How can I monitor temperature and the environmental status in remote sites? 

All Opengear console servers provide temperature & humidity monitoring and smoke, motion & water detection with alerting solutions for managing changes in these environmental conditions.

• All models support Environmental Monitoring Devices (EMD) connected to any (or all) of their serial ports
• Each console server can support multiple EMDs and each EMD device has one temperature and one humidity sensor and one or two general purpose status sensors
• You can attach two sensors onto the terminals on EMDs that are connected to console servers with Opengear classic pinouts. Console servers with -01 and -02 pinouts only support attaching a single sensor to each EMD
• The ACM5004-2-I and the industrial ACM5500 models (ACM5508-2-I, ACM5504-5-G-I and ACM5504-5-G-W-I ) each have an internal temperature sensor, and they can have two external environmental sensors directly attached
• All other ACM5500s have an internal temperature sensor
• All other ACM5000s also have an internal temperature sensor, and are available with an -E model which can have four external environmental sensors directly attached

Connect the EMD and its sensors 

The EMD connects to any serial port on the console server. It attaches via a special EMD Adapter and standard CAT5 cable (up to 33 feet) though it is not a standard RS232 device. The EMD is powered over the serial connection and communicates using a custom handshake protocol so must not be connected without the Adapter or connected to serial ports on other appliances.

• Plug the male RJ plug on the EMD Adapter into the EMD
• Connect the EMD Adapter to the console server serial port using the provided UTP cable. If the 6 foot (2 meter) UTP cable provided with the EMD is not ong enough it can be replaced with a standard Cat5 UTP cable up to 33 feet (10meters) in length
• Screw the bare wires on any smoke detector, water detector, vibration sensor, open-door sensor or general purpose open/close status sensors into the terminals on the EMD

 

Attach sensors to ACM5000-E/I/T 

By default on the ACM5000-E/I each SENSOR (and DIO1/2) port is configured as an Input so they are available to be used with external environmental sensors attached. To confirm the direction select System: I/O Ports menu and a table with the summary status of the four digital I/O ports will be displayed. 

 

Screw the bare wires on any smoke detector, water detector, vibration sensor, open-door sensor or general purpose open/close status sensors into the SENSOR or DIO terminals on the ACM5000 green connector block 

Configure environmental monitoring

• Select the Serial & Network: Environmental which will display any external EMDs or any “internal EMD” (i.e. sensors that may be directly attached to an ACM) that have already been configured
• To add a new EMD click Add and configure an external EMD enter a Name and optionally a Description and select the pre-configured serial port that the EMD will be Connected Via
• Select Environmental as the Device Type in the Serial & Network: Serial Port menu for the connected port and clickApply
• Click Add on the Serial & Network: Environmental menu and enter a Name and Description for the EMD
• You can calibrate the EMD with a Temperature Offset (+ or - °C) or Humidity Offset (+ or percent) and specify if the temperature is to will be reported in Fahrenheit or Celsius
• Provide Alarm Labels for each of the two external sensors

 

The console server will now monitor EMD temperature, humidity and sensor status.

• These readings can be monitored to automatically trigger automated responses and alarms. For details refer faq410-Environmental-Checks (for firmware pre V3.4.1 refer faq309).
• The status can also be reported to central monitoring software packages (such as SolarWinds and Zenoss) using SNMP. For details on SNMP capabilities refer faq355

All models of Opengear console servers except SD4001 and SD4002 also allow you to log the status from the EMD and sensors. To activate this status logging:

• When setting up the EMD on the Serial & Network: Environmental menu, check Log Status and specify the Log Rate(minutes between samples)
• The latest sixty-four log entries can be viewed at any time on the Status: Environmental Status screen

 

These logs can also be extracted at the command line. The historical data for EMDs is stored in /var/log/enviro/emd/ and there are two logfiles per EMD. The first logfile contains 64 samples and when this logfile fills it is copied over the second logfile and a new first logfile started. The logfiles are text formatted:

<seconds since epoch>|<temperature>|<load>|<charge>|<humidiy>|<dry contact 1>|<dry contact 2>|<number of alerts currently in effect> 

(Note: The two fields between temperature and humidity are the load (Amps) on a monitored UPS or RPC and the battery charge (Volts) on the UPS) 

You can periodically scp these logfiles from the console server and process yourself off box. Alternately if you only need values one at a time you can use the enviromon command which will give you the current values for a specified EMD, in the same format as the logfile.