# Check ambient temp from the Internet



## barry505 (Jan 20, 2008)

Does anyone know how to access the ambient temp sensor using the apache web server and make it display on a web page? I would like to be able to check the temperature of my house while I'm on vacation. I'm running an Intel iMac. I've done a lot of searches on this and haven't found anything.

Thanks


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## DeltaMac (Jan 20, 2008)

All of the temp sensors in an iMac register internal temps of various components. There is no sensor, AFAIK, that measures the temperature outside the case. All sensors show temperature increases as the system warms up, and would not show the ambient room temperature.
An external sensor, plugged into a USB port, and monitored through some software for that purpose would have that room temperature accessible, but the internal temps would all be skewed to some degree  by the heat generated by the computer itself.


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## symphonix (Jan 21, 2008)

http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20051021115356696 has a good bash script which seems to do the job, but on mine it leaves some of the values as floating point numbers rather than converting them to degrees celsius.


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## barry505 (Jan 21, 2008)

DeltaMac said:


> All of the temp sensors in an iMac register internal temps of various components. There is no sensor, AFAIK, that measures the temperature outside the case. All sensors show temperature increases as the system warms up, and would not show the ambient room temperature.
> An external sensor, plugged into a USB port, and monitored through some software for that purpose would have that room temperature accessible, but the internal temps would all be skewed to some degree  by the heat generated by the computer itself.



I thought there might be an ambient sensor, because programs like istat nano show an ambient temperature reading, and it's usually pretty close to room temp.


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## ElDiabloConCaca (Jan 22, 2008)

You could replace the word "ambient" with "average air temperature inside the computer housing."

Since most of the case is open air, the ambient temperature is basically the average air temperature inside of the computer case itself... while this may "sync" with the air temperature outside the case to some degree, for the most part, if the computer is being used at all (versus sitting idle) the ambient temperature will not be an accurate measure of the air temperature outside the case.


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