Configurable Sensors > Extension Sensors > Temperature/Home Automation Sensor

This sensor supports asynchronous events from external sources that contain device status information.

The sensor can monitor the temperature of CPU cores, hard disks or fan speeds in conjunction with the free tool SpeedFan. This tool can be configured to utilize the xAP Home Automation Protocol and publishes device status via UDP through the network.
You can install several agents of the utility onto every system for which you would like to monitor the temperature and fan speed. For each agent a xAP-Sensor is configured that captures the data, processes conditions and stores the data to the database.

If the temperature gets too high you can have a notification action configured or take other automatic actions to prevent your systems from overheating. To prevent false-positive warnings due to peaks that may occur during e.g. nightly backups, configure the condition to only perform the particular action after the condition matched 6-8 consecutive times for example. For the SpeedFan tool this corresponds to 3-4 minutes.
Another use case of course, is to monitor the speed of the system fans as they show a tendency to slow down after several months of operation due to dust and deterioration. A simple notification can save you from bigger hardware damages because the fan was exchanged early enough.

Configuration of the sensor:

xap_sensor_sidepanel

Side panel

Sensor Tasks

Test Sensor	Tests the current sensor settings
Get Help	Opens the ServerSentinel online help

Basic Settings

Display Name	Defines the name of the sensor
Active	Toggles the sensor ON/OFF
Check Interval	Interval between two sensor polls
	Since this sensor is event based, an interval cannot be specified,hence the control is disabled.
Only check if this sensor didn't fail	This sensor will only be checked, if the sensor in the drop down list didn't fail

Further Information

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XAP Home Automation Options

Source

Define the source to gather system information from.
If you are using the SpeedFan Tool this is a string, e.g.
"Almico.SpeedFan.HOSTNAME" just as specified in the configuration dialog (see below)

Most recent values

The most recent data that was seen by the system.

The values can be used as a reference for proper condition configuration.

For the sensor to operate correctly it is necessary to install a xAP hub in the default configuration when service and user interface run on the same host. This is required to delegate the xAP messages to both applications. Thus, the service can log them and the user interface, which has access to the most recent values, can be configured. A good hub is available as 'xfx express hub' on the internet. Remember to start the hub service if you just installed it and pay attention that ServerSentinel service and the GUI are not running so the xAP listenport is not occupied when the xAP message hub starts to operate.

If things are configured correctly, the 'source' drop-down menu will provide the known xAP sources.

Configuration of the SpeedFan tool:

You can set up SpeedFan to run as a Windows service with the script "SpeedFan as Service.vbs" in the directory "Sensor Libraries" (accessible from the start menu). For this the two files "instsrv.exe" and "srvany.exe" from the Windows 2003 Resource Kit (downloadable from Microsoft here) are required.

Copy the two files to the same directory the script resides in and run it after your SpeedFan was installed. This way, you can even capture temperature and fan data while no user is currently logged in.