I know that I cannot be alone in the category of pool owners who love gadgets. I wanted to share my newest gadget with everyone else. Let me introduce my new pool thermometer, an Outdoor Wireless Tag. I’m sure that very few of you will know that by name, so here comes the information.
Monitor and Find Everything from the Internet - Wireless Sensor Tags
Now some background. For some odd reason I like to know the temperature of my pool, which is odd since I don’t have a heater, and am 100% comfortable to swim in any water temp from 65 to 90 degrees. I have long wanted a way to check my pool temp from my phone, as well as the ability to log the temperature over time. The engineer in me likes to see data, and trends on how a warm spell or cold spell effects the overall pool temperature. Since I have no heater or pool automation, there seemed to be very few options. I did find some links to floating digital thermometers that could report their temperature over the web, but I read too many mixed reviews about the product. Plus I like to monitor water temp at about 18” deep in the water rather than the surface to get a better feel for overall water temperature.
The thermometer is basically a 1.5” by 4 inch long IP68 rated waterproof PVC tube with a sensor cable that is about 3 feet long (you can find ones much shorter or longer if you want). Since this device it not intended for 24x7 submerging, I had to find a way to mount the sensor out of the pool but within 2 feet of the pool so I could have the sensor in the water.
For my pool setup, there was no easy way to hide the white module since I don’t have a diving board, slide, wall right at the pool side. I considered mounting it to the underside of the skimmer lid, but though that could get complicated with the sensor hanging down in the skimmer basket. So for me, I decided to mount it onto my pool ladder (that no one uses) and then dangle the sensor down into the water, wrapping it around the ladder post to keep it in place. You can see it in mounted in these photos (disclaimer, with these photos, right next to the sensor is a skimmer net I keep mounted in my pool right now on the ladder to help with the ridiculous amount of pollen that I have, but this net has nothing to do with my sensor).
Some technical information. You need to get a tag and a DS18B20 probe which is $54 (a $15 off code until the end of June), and then an Ethernet Tag Manager ($51 with the power supply module). The ETM plugs into your router (unfortunately it itself Is not WiFi). The ETM and the probe need to be less than 100 feet away. From my testing, I am about 70 feet away and feel like I could get a little bit further.
I had an issue in my house, the internet router is nowhere near my pool, so I had to get a repeater.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01JOFIBV6/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o04_s01?ie=UTF8&psc=1
This took me 2 minutes to set up, and the way that it works, is you plug it into an outlet in your house. It then connects to the WiFi in your house. It has a wired port on it, and I then plugged the ETM into that port. The advantage of the repeater is that it acts as a WiFi Booster in your house anyway, so now my WiFi is stronger out by the pool anyway for everyone.
So this might be more money than most people want to spend, I get that. But I am very happy with the results. You can see a graph of my pool temp for the short time that I have had it. I am getting ready to get a 2nd outdoor sensor, so I can overlay the outdoor temp at my house with the pool temp. The single ETM can manage up to 40 sensors. Not directly related, but adjacent, the wireless tags support IFTTT, so this can be handy for home automation people, especially if you add more sensors throughout your house.
![](http://i.imgur.com/vb6FW2X.png width="150")
I have no affiliation with this product or company, just wanted to share my new gadget with the TFP community.
Monitor and Find Everything from the Internet - Wireless Sensor Tags
Now some background. For some odd reason I like to know the temperature of my pool, which is odd since I don’t have a heater, and am 100% comfortable to swim in any water temp from 65 to 90 degrees. I have long wanted a way to check my pool temp from my phone, as well as the ability to log the temperature over time. The engineer in me likes to see data, and trends on how a warm spell or cold spell effects the overall pool temperature. Since I have no heater or pool automation, there seemed to be very few options. I did find some links to floating digital thermometers that could report their temperature over the web, but I read too many mixed reviews about the product. Plus I like to monitor water temp at about 18” deep in the water rather than the surface to get a better feel for overall water temperature.
The thermometer is basically a 1.5” by 4 inch long IP68 rated waterproof PVC tube with a sensor cable that is about 3 feet long (you can find ones much shorter or longer if you want). Since this device it not intended for 24x7 submerging, I had to find a way to mount the sensor out of the pool but within 2 feet of the pool so I could have the sensor in the water.
For my pool setup, there was no easy way to hide the white module since I don’t have a diving board, slide, wall right at the pool side. I considered mounting it to the underside of the skimmer lid, but though that could get complicated with the sensor hanging down in the skimmer basket. So for me, I decided to mount it onto my pool ladder (that no one uses) and then dangle the sensor down into the water, wrapping it around the ladder post to keep it in place. You can see it in mounted in these photos (disclaimer, with these photos, right next to the sensor is a skimmer net I keep mounted in my pool right now on the ladder to help with the ridiculous amount of pollen that I have, but this net has nothing to do with my sensor).
Some technical information. You need to get a tag and a DS18B20 probe which is $54 (a $15 off code until the end of June), and then an Ethernet Tag Manager ($51 with the power supply module). The ETM plugs into your router (unfortunately it itself Is not WiFi). The ETM and the probe need to be less than 100 feet away. From my testing, I am about 70 feet away and feel like I could get a little bit further.
I had an issue in my house, the internet router is nowhere near my pool, so I had to get a repeater.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01JOFIBV6/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o04_s01?ie=UTF8&psc=1
This took me 2 minutes to set up, and the way that it works, is you plug it into an outlet in your house. It then connects to the WiFi in your house. It has a wired port on it, and I then plugged the ETM into that port. The advantage of the repeater is that it acts as a WiFi Booster in your house anyway, so now my WiFi is stronger out by the pool anyway for everyone.
So this might be more money than most people want to spend, I get that. But I am very happy with the results. You can see a graph of my pool temp for the short time that I have had it. I am getting ready to get a 2nd outdoor sensor, so I can overlay the outdoor temp at my house with the pool temp. The single ETM can manage up to 40 sensors. Not directly related, but adjacent, the wireless tags support IFTTT, so this can be handy for home automation people, especially if you add more sensors throughout your house.
I have no affiliation with this product or company, just wanted to share my new gadget with the TFP community.
