Technology
Remote Temperature Sensing and Kitchens
Why?
With all the hustle and bustle of a busy restaurant, detecting the temperature of a particular food item can be quite the cumbersome burden for the kitchen staff. They must constantly monitor food temperatures to avoid situations, such as meat going below health code friendly temperatures. With the walk-in refrigerator being constantly opened, the overall temperature of the products contained within its mighty metal prowess might go “bad". And we all know that “bad” or expired food is a boom for the medical industry. To avoid health violations, and angry customers suing the establishment, most, if not all, restaurants constantly monitor their food temperatures. This monitoring of temperature is just one of the million other tasks that the kitchen staff must focus on, thus slightly diverting their attention from other cooking necessities. So what is a busy restaurant manager supposed to do? How about let someone (or something) else monitor the food temperatures!
Remote Temperature Sensing
With remote temperature sensing, a thermometer could be placed inside the walk-in refrigerator, or upon some other temperature sensitive object. The sensor could be networked wirelessly or directly to a database. Wireless is a great option to consider, but when you are trying to broadcast a wi-fi, 2.4Ghz signal, through a steel refrigerator, you will probably suffer quite the amount of signal loss. Unless your manager is willing to drill a hole, and possibly leak some temperature, a wireless temperature sensor is infeasible and unreliable. Thus the database could easily monitor temperatures with a wired sensor at a constant non-human rate. This monitoring would allow for immediate notification to kitchen managers, and even provide a forecast when temperatures start to follow a certain trend, such as a gradual rise in temperature. is much nicer to catch a problem, like foods about to spoil due to insufficient climate conditions, than have to deal with the consequences. Throwing out that 95 pound steak just because it got “warm” is not going to put a smile on the face of a restaurant manager, nor their personified budgetA copious search on Google, www.google.com, did not find any feasible ethernet or wireless (wi-fi) temperature sensor, assembled into a working unit.In other words, buy the parts and build one yourself.