What you see the temperature board hooked up to is an Arduino, a cheap USB i/o controller available from Sparkfun electronics. I can control about 10 analog inputs (one is being used to monitor the voltage of the temperature sensor) and 10 or so 5V outputs that I monitor/switch from the computer. The neat thing about getting this interfaced to an i/o board is I can use the temperature data to switch devices, sound alarms, etc.

Here is a screenshot of the software. Basically, the temperature sensor takes an input of 5v, and will output a voltage at +10 mV/ Kelvin, which can be easily converted to Celcius as seen in the software. The sensor turns out to be quite accurate and highly responsive -- I can breath on the sensor lightly and detect a minute temperature change. Right now it is obviously not waterproof, but that is easily solvable with some heat shrink tubing (this is actually recommended in the IC datasheet by the manufacturer for making waterproof temp. sensors!)

A diagram of the board, and all the parts used. I'm happy to explain how the Arduino board works to any interested, and code examples are available for the brave hearted.

