I’ll admit it… I’m a tech junkie.  I love to play with some of these new IoT (Internet of Things) gadgets, and this one was RIGHT up my alley!  I had a temp sensor in our refrigerator and freezer to monitor temps.  It was a simple display that also tracked high and low temps which is really all I needed.  

But, in order to read it, I have to open up the refrigerator or freezer, which kind of defeats the purpose.  It would also be nice to get notified if the refrigerator goes out of a key range.  In comes this cool new “toy” – SensorPush’s wireless thermometer

This small blue gadget can continuously monitor temperature and humidity, and would alert me on my phone if the temp goes out of the range I specified.  There is an optional router that you can purchase to get those messages if you’re not close to the refrigerator (connection is bluetooth, so you have to be within 200 feet or so).  

I have an Android phone, and the setup was pretty straightforward.  There’s a different setup process with the router, but I chose to simply use the sensor.  Below is a snapshot of the app with the actual temp and humidity reading.  

This thing worked GREAT!  For about 1 week.  Then it died.  Nothing.  Nada.  Removed it from the refrigerator and dried it out for a few days.  Still nothing.  I contacted the company, and they immediately sent a replacement quickly.   I re-synced with my phone and it worked great again.  For just a few days.  Same thing occurred.

I had further discussions with the folks at SensorPush, and they had asked whether I was keeping it in a humid environment.  Well, yeah, it’s an RV refigerator!  What I eventually figured out is that I was keeping it in the wrong place.  I had conveniently set it on the water tray in the back so it was out of our way.  But, these sensors were not really intended to get that much water in them.  Bottom line, I guess I drowned the first two!

SensorPush sent me out a third one, and I decided that I liked putting it on that tray, but I had to put it in something that would keep it dry.  They suggested a ziplock.  After the first two failures, I thought something more robust might be best, so I vaccu-sealed it using our FoodSaver!

Is this overkill?  Maybe, but I wasn’t going to kill another well-intentioned sensor.  So far, this has been working successfully for 3-4 weeks without problem.  So the lesson is:  

Don’t drown your sensors

– Just Another Joslyn Project Quote

Even with all of these challenges (which really was more of me not realizing that this sensor wasn’t waterproof), I’ll probably buy another one in the future for our freezer.  But in a FoodSaver jacket.  🙂