Looking for another project to make with a Raspberry Pi? You can use your Raspberry Pi to measure temperature. Not only at a single point, but also at maximum of 20 points simultaneously. Of course, you will need 20 individual sensors for doing that. Raspberry Pi will poll all the 20 sensors one after the other, and read the temperature from each of the sensors.
If you are wondering how complicated it would be to wire up 20 sensors to the Raspberry Pi, you can relax, since you need only three wires in all. One of the wires will carry power to the sensors, one wire will be the ground or return path and the third wire is a unique 1-wire interface to control the sensor and to read the temperature measured by it.
This wonder sensor is a High-Precision 1-Wire Digital Thermometer, DS18S20, with a measurement range of -55°C to +125°C (-67°F to +257°F), a thermometer resolution of 9-bits and an accuracy of ±0.5°C from -10°C to +85°C. Maxim Integrated makes this thermometer and the smallest size is a little larger than a matchstick head (TO-92).
Not only can this tiny fellow read the temperature, it stores them in its non-volatile memory and can present them either as °C or as °F. You can set temperature limits in its memory and DS18S20 will tell you when the temperature it is monitoring goes beyond the programmed limits. You can use this thermometer with the Raspberry Pi to control thermostats, industrial systems, consumer products or any thermally sensitive system.
At this point, you may be wondering if there is only one single wire for all the 20 sensors, how is the Raspberry Pi able to differentiate the twenty temperature readings. Maxim has programmed each of the sensors with a unique serial number, and when Raspberry Pi wants to read the temperature from a specific sensor, it simply asks for it by the serial number of that sensor. Only the sensor whose serial number the Raspberry Pi queries, sends the temperature data, all the others remain silent.
The Raspbian Linux distribution that you are using in your Raspberry PI already has all necessary kernel modules installed for accessing the 1-wire bus. The programming details are rather simple and you can refer to them here.
What else can you do with a DS18S20 and Raspberry Pi? You may be measuring temperature at a remote place, or there is no space for the extra power supply to the DS18S20. So, instead of supplying power separately, you could make DS18S20 “steal” power from the 1-Wire bus. For this, you must connect the VDD pin of the DS18S20 to ground. According to the datasheet, do not use the parasitic mode for measurements above 100°C, as the DS18S20 will not be able to sustain communications.
If you have programmed temperature limits for some of the DS18S20s, they will raise a flag if the temperature they are sensing goes beyond the set points. By polling for the flags, Raspberry Pi can know, which sensor is sensing temperatures beyond its set point.
