monitor your freezer temp with neat gadget

[mazzgolf]

Here's a neat gadget I got - thought others might find this useful, especially if you have a game meat freezer.

Background: After all the venison, goose, duck, pheasant, squirrel, etc. I got this past season, the wife got annoyed at me that I was taking up too much space in her freezer. (note: "her" freezer). We have two fridge-freezer combos actually, one in the kitchen, one in the garage. Apparently, not good enough. So I splurged and bought "me" my own chest freezer. The only place I could put it is in the basement.

Well, since I don't go down there often, I was afraid of what might happen if the freezer breaks, or the circuit breaker goes off. I don't want the meat to spoil simply because the freezer shut down and I never noticed.

So, I bought me one of these: https://smile.amazon.com/dp/B077GQ2SL7

Very useful gadget! I put one of the thermometer units in the chest freezer, and since it comes with two, I put the other in the garage freezer. It is fully remote with no wires to feed into the freezer so the freezer door can shut tight normally. It keeps track of the highest and lowest recorded temp as well as showing you the current temp. You can set the alarm to "beep" if the temperature goes above (or below) a certain threshold. And you can have separate alarms for the two different thermometers. I put the main monitoring unit on my desk in my office.

Yesterday, the stupid snowstorm killed our power for several hours. At like 4am I start hearing an annoying beeping. I go downstairs to my office, and sure enough, the temp in my chest freezer got to +10F degrees (the threshold I set for the alarm) and triggered the beeping. So I know it works  I hit the button on the main unit to silence the alarm, but at least I knew to keep an eye on it from then on. Power eventually came back on and the temp has been back down to its normal range (which is usually +0F to -4F).

Anyway, thought it was interesting enough to share.

Is it turkey season yet? 

[Thunderchicken]

[Haskell_Hunter]

So I decided to buy this because I've lost two freezers full of game meat in the past and don't want to go through that experience ever again.  The documentation is pretty crappy because whoever translated it into English didn't do a very good job, but installing it is as easy as putting the batteries in it.  I got them on Sunday and promptly installed them into my freezers.

Like I do with any other gadget I get, I obsessively hovered over it, learning as much as I could.  One of the units stopped responding after two days, but powering everything down and back on resolved the issue.

But I got up this AM after my oldest headed to school.  I have a brand new chest freezer that's been doing a great job keeping things frozen and holding temperature.  When I looked at this gadget this AM, the temp in the chest freezer was 35°F.  I freaked out because the freezer also has an alarm that goes off if the temp rises 10°F, and it never went off.  I have the temp probe from this gadget at the top of the freezer, not at the bottom.  I went into the basement and the lid was wide open!  I would never had known that without this device installed.  Some of the popsicles at the top of the freezer started getting soft, but everything at the bottom was still frozen solid.

Thanks for posting this link!  That device just paid for itself!

[Tarhunt]

I have three freezers and I'll be ordering them. Thanks.

[tomturkey]

Nice info, thanks for sharing!

[mazzgolf]

 

Glad I could help.

Yeah, the documentation is lacking, but the interface isn't too difficult once you just play around and start pressing buttons  I thought it was intuitive enough to learn without needing a lot of documentation.

BTW: my one thermometer in the basement freezer did stop reporting the day I got it. I had the main console unit on my kitchen fridge door - turns out, because the chest freezer is in the basement on the opposite side of the house, I think it was just outside the range of the radio signals. Once I moved the main unit to my office (which is on the same side of the house as the chest freezer, just on a different floor) I got good signal to both thermometers and never had a problem since. So just make sure you don't have too large a distance between the thermometers and the main console unit.

Oh, and another thing, for the thermometer units, because they are going to be in a very cold/below freezing environment, I didn't use regular alkaline batteries, I bought those more expensive ones - the lithium ones. Regular alkaline are in the main console unit though.

Edited March 28, 2018 by mazzgolf

[Haskell_Hunter]

2 hours ago, mazzgolf said:

 

Glad I could help.

Yeah, the documentation is lacking, but the interface isn't too difficult once you just play around and start pressing buttons  I thought it was intuitive enough to learn without needing a lot of documentation.

BTW: my one thermometer in the basement freezer did stop reporting the day I got it. I had the main console unit on my kitchen fridge door - turns out, because the chest freezer is in the basement on the opposite side of the house, I think it was just outside the range of the radio signals. Once I moved the main unit to my office (which is on the same side of the house as the chest freezer, just on a different floor) I got good signal to both thermometers and never had a problem since. So just make sure you don't have too large a distance between the thermometers and the main console unit.

Oh, and another thing, for the thermometer units, because they are going to be in a very cold/below freezing environment, I didn't use regular alkaline batteries, I bought those more expensive ones - the lithium ones. Regular alkaline are in the main console unit though.

I put lithium batteries in it for the same reasons.  Both probes are literally right underneath me, next two each other.  The fridges are side-by-side.  I ordered another set to see if those work better.  I'll return one of the two sets.

[Buck154]

Good idea. I might have to get a couple