A while ago I started logging temperatures to Pachube via a Nanode. For the most part this works fine, but sometimes something breaks and I might lose a few hours or days worth of data. It might be the Nanode that's gone down, or Pachube, or (most likely) my Internet connection. So I decided to build a simple 3 stage external Watchdog Timer that would monitor the status of the feed and start taking steps to rectify it.
I've been working on a few Arduino projects recently that will hopefully result in varying levels of home automation. The effect so far has been to stick a box here, plug this in there, and dangle a wire from over there, with a general haphazard (with emphasis on the 'hazard' bit in some places!) outcome. If this is to work with any degree of success, it needs some more permanent infrastructure. It needs power. It needs internet connectivity. It needs to be centralised. It needs easy access to things I want to monitor and/or control. It needs to be tidy and out of the way, but easily accessible. There's a shelf in my cloak room that meets most of those criteria, so this weekend I started getting it prepared;
