Support FAQ

Can I monitor temperature and the status of other sensors in remote sites?

All models of Opengear console servers support having Environmental Monitoring Devices (EMD) connected to any (or all) of their serial ports. Each console server can support multiple EMDs and each EMD device has one temperature and one humidity sensor and one or two general purpose status sensors. You can attach two sensors onto the terminals on EMDs that are connected to console servers with Opengear classic pinouts. However the KCS6116 and console servers with -01 and -02 pinouts only support attaching a single sensor to each EMD.

The status sensors can be connected to a smoke detector, water detector, vibration or open-door sensor. So you can view the ambient temperature, humidity and sensor status and automatically send warning alerts and critical alarms from all the sensors.

The EMD connects to any serial port on the console server. It attaches via a special EMD Adapter and standard CAT5 cable (up to 33 feet) though it is not a standard RS232 device. The EMD is powered over the serial connection and communicates using a custom handshake protocol so must not be connected without the Adapter or connected to serial ports on other appliances. To configure once connected:

Select Environmental as the Device Type in the Serial & Network: Serial Port menu for the connected port and click Apply
Click Add on the Serial & Network: Environmental menu and enter a Name and Description for the EMD
You can calibrate the EMD with a Temperature Offset (+ or - °C) or Humidity Offset (+ or percent)
Provide Alarm Labels for each of the two external sensors

The console server will now monitor EMD temperature, humidity and sensor status. Refer faq309 for details on using these monitored readings to automatically trigger alarms

All models of Opengear console servers except CM4001/8 and SD4002/8 also allow you to log the status from the EMD and sensors. To activate this status logging:

When setting up the EMD on the Serial & Network: Environmental menu, check Log Status and specify the Log Rate (minutes between samples)
The latest sixty-four log entries can be viewed at any time on the Status: Environmental Status screen

These logs can also be extracted at the command line. The historical data for EMDs is stored in /var/log/enviro/emd/ and there are two logfiles per EMD. The first logfile contains 64 samples and when this logfile fills it is copied over the second logfile and a new first logfile started. The logfiles are text formatted:

<seconds since epoch>|<temperature>|<load>|<charge>|<humidiy>|<dry contact 1>|<dry contact 2>|<number of alerts currently in effect>

(Note: The two fields between temperature and humidity are the load (Amps) on a monitored UPS or RPC and the battery charge (Volts) on the UPS)

You can periodically scp these logfiles from the console server and process yourself off box. Alternately if you only need values one at a time you can use the enviromon command which will give you the current values for a specified EMD, in the same format as the logfile.