Rainmeter Samurize utilities

Samurize plugins

These plugins are for the Samurize desktop info/ gadget app. It's a very mature and capable app, though, sadly, it appears to be dying. Still, I use these plugins daily and find them very useful, so I decided to make them available.

TEMPer

(for XP, Vista and Win7)

A source plugin for the TEMPer, a simple USB thermometer made in China. The TEMPer is used to monitor fish tanks, server rooms, solar panels, etc. You can pick it up on eBay for about $10. This plugin can monitor multiple devices.

TEMPer

This plugin is for the newer TEMPers with HID interface, made after mid-2009. Older TEMPers used a virtual COM port. The makers of TEMPer often change the interface, which makes plugin development hard. They're also unresponsive as far as help with development.

TEMPer config
TEMPer graph

This graph shows the temperature in a room cooled by AC. The sawtooth shape comes from the cycle of warming up/cooling down as the AC switches on and off.

Settings

Device ID Which TEMPer to monitor. The index starts at 0
F / C Fahrenheit or Celsius

Accuracy

I did some experiments to test TEMPer's accuracy. TEMPer reports temp. in °C. The temp. in °F is calculated in software. Since the conversion involves a mult. by 5/9, the temp. in °F may end up with many decimal places, giving a false impression of accuracy. The measurments in °C actually look like this:

27.9375° 27.8125° 27.875° 28.0625° ...

Clearly, all values are multiples of 0.0125°C (1/80°C or 0.02°F). That's how granular TEMPer can be. This doesn't mean that TEMPer is actually that accurate. To test accuracy, I touched the TEMPer's enclosure with my finger. Inside the TEMPer, there's a small gap between the sensor and the enclosure, which slows down heat transfer and allows slow, controlled rise of temp. Here's what I got:

27.6875° 27.6875° 27.6875° 27.6875°
27.75° 27.75° 27.75° 27.75°
27.8125° 27.8125° 27.8125° 27.875°
27.875° 27.875 ...  

Looks like the TEMPer doesn't detect temp. change in steps of 0.0125°C, but in bigger steps of about 0.06°C (0.1°F). This seems to be TEMPer's real accuracy.

 

I then tested the TEMPer against an IR spot thermometer to test the calibration, i.e., how much TEMPer's values are shifted with respect to real value. I got the same values, down to 0.5°C. TEMPer seems well calibrated out of the box.

 

Download

Download TEMPer.zip (161K)