USB indoor / outdoor thermometer: for when walking outside is just too hard

Believe us, we've seen a variety of unorthodox thermometers before, but this one just shines in a very special way. Brando's USB indoor / outdoor thermometer ($22) is pretty self-explanatory, but we'll humor you a bit by going into detail. The unit itself is powered via your USB port and provides a much more precise reading than those silly weather websites that just take samples from an area nearby. There's even software bundled in to log readings every second for 12 whole hours. Science project, anyone?

[Via Coolest Gadgets]

[Lowest Ranked @ Aug 15th 2008 11:54AM]

The article actually states that it can record the temperature from _between_ every second _to_ 12 whole hours, not just every second for 12 whole hours. A bit redundant but still just as useless considering it must stay plugged into your computer, where the temperature is more readily available via the internet.

[julian @ Aug 15th 2008 12:23PM]

not to mention if you have a an old old overheating beast of a laptop like m the readings would not be representative of the whole area/room. but the probe could be useful...

[klew @ Aug 15th 2008 12:43PM]

The "every second to 12 hours" sounds more like the interval time between data points. It can take a temperature reading every second or every 4 hours, 12 minutes, and 19 seconds, if that's what you wanted, up to a maximum 12 hour interval (two readings a day). I wonder about memory or maximum possible number of data points. Also, internet won't tell you the internal room temperature.

[Ford Mustang @ Aug 15th 2008 4:50PM]

Yea its useless unless you actually have an imagination.

Heck, even if it was only capable of telling you the temperature outside, for $20 I'd buy it just to see the the temperature outside my house plotted/graphed over a long period of time. That alone would be worth the $20.

[Joachim Bengtsson @ Aug 15th 2008 11:59AM]

Eh, yeah, this is pretty useless -- unless you need the temperature in software. I'm sure you could write something fun with the data from that device :)

[quag @ Aug 15th 2008 12:07PM]

Actually, this thing could be really handy for thing like:

Monitoring a server room and displaying the temp on a web page.

Monitoring the temp of chilled storage areas (for food, wine, etc).

Combined with a cheap PC it could be really useful.

[JR @ Aug 15th 2008 12:10PM]

I wouldn't say it is useless. Try to find another option that records hundreds of temperatures at scheduled intervals for under $25.

[Valgas @ Aug 15th 2008 12:22PM]

good butt thermometer?

[curtisrutland @ Aug 15th 2008 12:37PM]

Why would you possibly want to know that?

[BigD145 @ Aug 15th 2008 1:23PM]

For those anal retentive people.

[heng @ Aug 15th 2008 12:23PM]

Hey guys
this thing is much less crappy then it sounds. I already bought 2 ( 1just temp and one temp and humidity)
I use it for Logging purposes in the office, ( we have over 30°C very often) and it works great. the software can even send a email every so often and it has a temp alert when temperature is over a certain value.
it writes .csv tables 1 per hour you can use in excel.
you will have to set the correction factor by comparing with another thermometer.. but otherwise it is cheap and does the job. I paid about 12€ on ebay. it suits my needs just fine. ok not everybody needs to know the air temperature..
but I bet you can do al kinds of stuff with it. pc temperature, other temperature surveillance wherever. of course it is better if the values would trigger some other device or something.( regulation of some sort)

[Steve A. @ Aug 15th 2008 12:55PM]

Exactly. I use something similar to this as a cheap backup system to monitor my server room temperatures. If ambient air temps go too high (as in an air conditioner failure), I'll get an email & text from both my main systems and an laptop connected with one of these guys.

Well worth every cent.

[ShadowKain @ Aug 15th 2008 12:32PM]

EH? Why would you do that? Wait, don't even answer... -1

[thepolytheist @ Aug 15th 2008 12:44PM]

WARNING: For indoor or outdoor use only.

[Eric Law @ Aug 15th 2008 1:03PM]

Stick this in several servers in your datacenter and you dont have to buy dedicated commercial device to read your datacenter temps.
for the consumer, it doesn't seem very useful aside from science projects and meteorological activities.

[lanoitarus @ Aug 15th 2008 1:19PM]

Seems like it could make for some interesting tricks if combined with X10 or other automation software.... For example, automatically turning on window fans if its substantially cooler outside than inside (which happens a lot where i live-- old brick rowhouses ftl, heatwise)

[BigD145 @ Aug 15th 2008 1:23PM]

This is a good price for what it does.

[GarthBock @ Aug 15th 2008 1:38PM]

Nice but kind of specialized to almost useless. Get a Davis Vantage Pro 2 wireless weather station and all have all the realtime stats on your computer updated every 2-3 seconds. Depending on the software you can have it email you with alerts. Also has the capacity for extra sensors to monitor other areas. However if you want small, there are temp and pressure devices that you can leave at a monitoring site for a month, then plug them into you USB port to download all collected data points.

[Le Big Mac @ Aug 15th 2008 2:47PM]

Sure, the Davis is great if you want to drop $500 to get the temperature.

[Erik @ Aug 15th 2008 1:53PM]

It kind of saddens me how some people really can't think outside the box, especially on a more tech-savvy crowd (I'd hope) such as Engadget readers.

At first glance it would seem very mundane perhaps. A 'mere' thermometer. But it's a sensor, which data could be important to some. I can see this being applied to numerous applications in the business and commercial world as well as the homebrew side. There are many more uses for a thermometer than "I wonder what temperature it is outside so I can dress appropriately."

The only issue I have is that it is not wireless. If it were wireless, that would be really, REALLY cool.

[Jay Evans @ Aug 15th 2008 2:02PM]

I agree. I can think of several automotive tuning (dataloging) uses for the probe.

[matt @ Aug 15th 2008 3:24PM]

Yes, it would be incredibly useful for us. We have several freezers as part of our business, manually temperature recording is a pain, and this would alert to any problems quicker. Anyone have any Ideas where I can get a few in the UK?

[foxdude0486 @ Aug 15th 2008 1:56PM]

Awesome idea as said above for server room temps, just leave plugged into a server and if you have a good network, instant vewing anywhere you can remote access from. I'd also see if it'd be good for monitoring temps in animal cages for things such as reptiles.

[srw985 @ Aug 15th 2008 2:11PM]

If someone made software to incorporate it into the default Vista weather gadget I'd buy it.

[Adam @ Aug 15th 2008 2:34PM]

I think it would be awesome to make this waterproof, insert in the side of the pool and have a display of pool temperature... :)

[lukas88 @ Aug 15th 2008 2:50PM]

This would be really good for research, and not just for situations where walking outside is "just too hard"

[FreXxX @ Aug 15th 2008 5:05PM]

Well, this could be very useful to the owners of watercooling, to measure the waters temperature.

[Emil @ Aug 15th 2008 6:48PM]

too bad .... it's not Mac compatible , how people can think to make money if they don't make it Osx compatible ?

[Mark @ Aug 15th 2008 8:40PM]

Looks like the usb driver emulates a COM port so you could write your own custom software for it.

[Chris Taylor @ Aug 15th 2008 10:53PM]

Can you use more than one of these on a single machine?

[pretol @ Aug 22nd 2008 12:05AM]

I think you guys are a little too critical. It's a thermometer. How can you criticize a thermometer? Maybe you don't need one, maybe the nearest weather station is close enough for you. Some people need temperature logs that are a little more intimate than the closest weather station. It's a simple tool that does a simple task. Jeez.

Here's the next post:

"Oh look. It's a gardening shovel. We buy all our produce at safeway/albertsons/lucky/etc, so why the hell would we need any gardening tools. Shovels are totally dumb"

[Adam @ Aug 15th 2008 5:24PM]

That, and it looks a lot cooler to have a Samurize config with inside/outside temps that are accurate!

[systemtyrant @ Aug 24th 2008 3:04PM]

This device was actually created to put between you laptop and your legs. Think turkey timer.