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Almot

out there

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Posted: 02/01/22 10:08am

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Does anybody have recommendations? Amazon mostly have one design that everybody is cloning shamelessly. Prices start from $17 and I am not sure whether $25 one would be any better. Huge 4x4 inch monitor box with 3 displays, 2 for fridge and freezer and 1 for ambient (don't need the latter, already have a perfectly functional indoor thermometer). Takes 7 (!) batteries: 2*2AA for sensors and 3AAA for main unit.

Not being picky, but - from my experience with wired kitchen thermometer these things do malfunction. When I put wired probe in the fridge, it would sometimes turn off or reset when fridge started (or stopped) the cycle, - electric noise/interference maybe. Or it would change readings to gibberish upon reset, and I had to turn it off and on - then it worked for a while until malfunctioned again.

vermilye

Oswego, NY, USA

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Posted: 02/01/22 10:35am

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I have tried a number of different wireless 2 channel (fridge body & freezer) thermometers, and after having most of them fail, often still giving the last reading on the display when the sensor died, I switched to a pair of Sensor Push devices. No display - reads on your phone. Provides instant / hour / day / week / month graphs of temperature & humidity. Expensive, but they work. I now have 4 sensors, 2 for the refrigerator, one for outside temperature & one I keep in my medicine storage box.

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Jim-Linda

Livingston, TX

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Posted: 02/01/22 10:39am

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Go to Ambient Weather site. Great selection of remote units. We have a unit with 5 remote sensors, freezer, fridge, outside, storage compartment and interior. Uses AAA batteries, ours is 7 years old, no issues.

Jim

Ltrip

Reno, NV

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Posted: 02/01/22 11:23am

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We have this one for our trailer:
AcuRite Digital Wireless Fridge and Freezer Thermometer with Alarm and Max/Min Temperature for Home and Restaurants (00986M), 0.6, White
Available on Amazon
We have had good success with it.

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bob213

Fresno, CA

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Posted: 02/01/22 12:20pm

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This one might be $10 more than the knock-offs but we have had it for 7 years and it still works.
thermometer

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Krusty

Calgary, Alberta,Canada

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Posted: 02/01/22 12:54pm

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I have been using the AcuRite from Amazon for 7-8 years and it's been great

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Gdetrailer

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Posted: 02/01/22 01:20pm

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Any remote sensor which uses a battery, wireless AND is in a COLD place can be problematic.

Standard "dry cells" hate low temperatures and with temps of 45F or less they will live very short lives.

Found that out with a Digital T-stat for my garage furnace. Only heat the garage when I am planning to work in it, gets below 32F often during the winter.. More than once had to replace the batteries in that T-stat within a month during the winter before I got smart and ditched the batteries for a separate power supply..

You could try Lithium non rechargeable batteries for low temp use, may work better..

Also have a wireless remote "weather station" with wind speed, direction outdoor humidity.. Yeah, batteries often fail faster during extreme low winter time temps and changing the batteries requires standing on your head to resync the remote to inside unit.. Not to mention, the wireless portion is flaky at best, typically loses connection when there is a weather event and if lost too long a resync is in order again..

For fridge/freezer applications, I prefer the wired route, much more reliable, cheap and effective and keeps the battery outside of the cold of the fridge.. Very easy to slip the wire between the door gasket..

Keep in mind, you will be reading the AIR temps inside the fridge, may not reflect the actual overall FOOD temps as they slowly vary in temps compared to the change in air temps.

pianotuna

Regina, SK, Canada

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Posted: 02/01/22 03:39pm

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Gdetrailor,

My experience is that Alkaline batteries perform rather better than Li at low temperatures. It is anecdotal evidence.

Regards, Don
My ride is a 28 foot Class C, 256 watts solar, 556 amp-hours of Telcom jars, 3000 watt Magnum hybrid inverter, Sola Basic Autoformer, Microair Easy Start.

Almot

out there

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Posted: 02/01/22 04:51pm

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Gdetrailer wrote:

For fridge/freezer applications, I prefer the wired route, much more reliable, cheap and effective and keeps the battery outside of the cold of the fridge.. Very easy to slip the wire between the door gasket..

Keep in mind, you will be reading the AIR temps inside the fridge,

Maybe my Ebay wired thermometer was too cheap at $8. Like I wrote earlier, it was sensitive to - well, anything. Just sitting in cold temperature (wired sensor only), it was causing main unit to shut down after a few hours - this is the best scenario. Worst and more common scenario - fridge cycles on or off, the device beeps as if some set temperature was reached, and set temp resets to default 70 - but you can't see this because readings reset to gibberish 888 or shut down completely and won't turn On until you press the Off/On button for a few seconds. Very annoying. Oddly, when sitting in the cupboard between uses, it is quite happy.

I usually tuck that sharp wired sensor under some massive cold item, to avoid erroneous air readings.

dieseltruckdriver

Black Hills of SD

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Posted: 02/01/22 05:12pm

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I am not trying to be glib about this, but I use beer and ice cubes (not at the same time). If the beer is cold the fridge is working correctly, and if the water turns to ice cubes, the freezer is working.

I was going to order one of the AcuRite ones with the fridge and freezer sensors until I thought about that. It is still in my list, but so far my plan B is working. [emoticon]