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Old 02-23-2017, 05:45 PM   #1
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Coach Internal Temp and pets

Dee and I travel with 2 house cats. They have now logged about 30,000 miles with us and have become pretty good travelers. Our observation is that >70% of Entegra owners travel with dogs or cats or pot bellied pigs . And since the first mile that we traveled with our cats, I have been deathly afraid that while we are touring in the toad in some very hot area (Galveston in August for example), the RV park line power will fail, our ACs will fail, or if boondocking, the autostart on the genny will fail to start the generator and the temperature in the coach will sky rocket. I have lamented that there is no iPhone app that you could leave one phone in the coach and if the temperature exceeded some level, it would call my wife's cell phone to tell us we needed to get back to the coach before our cats perish in the heat.

Well, an owner of a Newmar that I met last week told me about a product that I had never heard of before and I want to make pet owners on this list aware of this product. The product is named a "Temp Stick". The temp stick is a wireless device that can communicate with a "jetpack (Verizon)" or MIFI unit (or any router) in a coach which is itself linked to the cell phone provider. I had already added a MIFI box for $10 more a month. I bought a TempStick for about $150 from Amazon but it is available from the company Ideal Sciences — Smart Sensor Technology and other sources. The TempStick is a stand alone battery powered unit about a third of the size of a pack of cigarettes, which will sample the temp as frequently as you wish (every 30 min, every hour, every 15 minutes). The temp/humidity is uploaded to idealscience's web page which can be accessed either from any PC or device with access to their web page or there is an iPhone app and an Android app. directly from your smartphone. Best, you can set up notices that are sent anywhere you want it to be sent (text or email) when the temp or humidity is above or below some level you can set. If the temp in the coach exceeds those limits, the TempStick web page will send you either a text or email within 5 minutes that the threshhold was exceeded. New batteries will last approximately 9 months. Battery state can be assessed from the web page also. The web page graphs temp and humidity and is stored on their web page so can be accessed historically.

This device is exactly what Dee and I have been looking for and I wanted to make sure that everyone who is concerned about their pets in the same way we were knows about it.

Gary
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Old 02-23-2017, 06:50 PM   #2
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Thanks for the post Gary. We travel with 2 small dogs, and the power failure (s) have been on our mind as well, and there has been no real solution for it. I don't have a router in my coach, but do carry and use a ATT hot spot for our internet needs that works quite well. Finding something that monitors the temps and will notify us if the temps rise above a certain number is what we have been looking for. I will look into this.
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Old 02-23-2017, 07:34 PM   #3
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Gary. I will look into to this product. Believe it or not, there are baby monitors out there that have temp sensors built in them as well as video and sound. I want something that will work with my mifi card that will still work with the loss of power.

Herb
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Old 02-23-2017, 07:53 PM   #4
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Very nice, thank you.
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Old 02-23-2017, 08:00 PM   #5
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I've started playing around with a SmartThings setup in the coach. We have a SmartThings setup in the S&B house and we really like it.

Need to be a little bit of a geek to get everything working, but you are basically unlimited on the number and types of sensors you can add to the system.

For the coach, my main test is how much data will it use. My research of the SmartThings forums say it shouldn't be much more than 1-200 MB's a month in data usage.

As far as working in an event of a power failure, I'm using an inverter outlet, so it should continue to work as long as I have battery power. Additionally, I can use the SmartThings phone app, and check on current conditions anytime I want.

Finally, I get a message on my phone anytime the SmartThings hub loses communication to the cloud. So if I get the message, I can check the phone app, and see if it's really offline, or just intermittent. I can also see what the readings and time stamps were when communication was loss.

Besides data usage, my concern is I will get a lot of false alarms due to bad wireless service locations. Since we like the national parks and those seem to the spotty at best.

Steve
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Old 02-23-2017, 08:09 PM   #6
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I spent a lot of time researching this topic last year (as many have) and found there is alot of confusing and/or complicated technology out there that could fit the bill.

That said, let me share what I ended up doing. I took an old iPhone 5s and added an app called "Manything". This free app uses the device's camera to become a webcam which you can watch from the iPhone in your pocket. Then I bought a $15 upright temperature gauge and placed it in front of the camera.

I use a month to month SIM card from AT&T for the "webcam iPhone" so if the park has poor wifi I can always see the temperature in the coach. When we are out during the day, I simply check the Manything camera every hour or so to be sure the coach's temperature is ok.

A low tech way to use some modern technology.

You can also position the temp gauge such that you can also see some of the coach in the background to see the pets.

As a bonus, Manything will send you a text message when it detects movement.
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Old 02-24-2017, 09:55 AM   #7
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Good info Gary, been looking for something like that! I've been using the RV Command/Boat Command for a few years now.

Remote Coast Systems | Boat Security / RV Security

Cloud based technology reports voltage for two banks of batteries, temp (opt sensor), presence of shore power, security breach, GPS location, etc. via text msg, web or app. Uses cellular (currently AT&T I believe).

Works well in my experience but downside is the monthly $9 fee for the service. Requires cell service at your coach location to function but so does the other. Also takes a bit of work to hook up some of sensor wiring if you decide to use them.
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