Simple program and PS script to allow monitoring of liquid temps in liquid cooling PCs
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Make sure that your liquid cooling loop has a temp probe installed. For my project I used this Phobya G1/4" Inline Temperature Sensor, but any will be fine.
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Buy yourself a Trinket M0. This is a board I used, but feel free to use a different one and change the code as needed. Trinket M0 is very cool as it can natively output serial data via USB, and it can be seen in Windows as COM device. It also has RGB diode which is useful to have some indication of liquid temperature without need to access data in OS.
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Solder some goldpins to your Trinket M0 - pin A4 will be used as analog input, which is conveniant as GND is right next to it. (check `Troubleshooting for additional solder points you may have to add)
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Flash trinket_m0_temp_sensor.ino into your board.
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Connect temp probe from your liquid cooling loop into your board. You remembered to add it to your loop, right? :)
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Power your Trinket M0 with usb from your PC. It should immediately display colors that indicate temperature:
| Avg. Color | Temp range C | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Blue | 0 - 24 | Ambient |
| Green | 25 - 32 | Idle |
| Yellow | 33 - 37 | Light load |
| Orange | 38 - 53 | Regular load |
| Red | 54 - 59 | Overheat |
| Hot Pink | > 60 | Danger! |
Keep in mind that colors will tend to shift from blue -> green -> yellow -> red smoothly, so it's best to expect soe color range as indication of actual temperature.
You can use the tool [PuTTY](www.putty.org to read the output. On PuTTY, switch the connection type to Serial, set the Serial Line to your COM port (COM3, for instance), and verify that the speed is 9600.
When you click open, it should be reading out values.
- I use tool called Fan Control. It's a great free tool that accepts file as mock "sensor". We can log our liquid temp into file and Fan Control will control our fans using this file. Download the tool and create new custom sensor.
- Launch Windows Scheduler and create new Task:
- basic: administrator privileges + launch regardless of logged in user
- trigger: on user login
- actions: launch program - powershell, arguments: -command &{path-to\Trinket-M0-liquid-temperature-sensor\src\WatchLiquidTemp.ps1 -filePath 'path-to\FanControl\LiquidTemp.sensor' -com COM5} (change COM5 to whatever is seen by your system)
- Save your task and restart system. After reboot your custom sensor should display values from liquid temp sensor.
- I use tool called Fan Control. Download latest plugin DLL from Releases. Use instructions from FanControl Wiki.
- Set environment variable SENSOR_COM_PORT to whichever com port your trinket is connected to
- Works! :)
If you have flucuating values coming from the probe, you will need to solder a 10K resistor between the 3V and A4.
If you don't have one of that resistance, you can get once close to that. Just make sure to update the SERIESRESISTOR in the .ino file to the correct resistance.