We are pleased to announce that we are fully restocked of the Outdoor Probe Thermocouple.  In this year's new production batch, we updated the local memory hardware to the same non-volatile memory already production proven in our External Power Sensor.  This prevents loss of recorded temperature data when battery is removed during local recording or even during data upload. 

Unlike Outdoor Probe Basic, the thermocouple version contains high quality 16-bit internal temperature sensor from Texas Instruments, which not only provides "cold junction compensation" needed to read K-type thermocouple, but also an ambient temperature data stream when either the DS18B20 probe or k-type is attached, or when no probe is attached at all. 

K-type thermocouples allow logging and monitoring of -70°C and colder freezer, oven or dishwasher (e.g. 250°F and up) whose temperature would exceed the lower (-55°C) or upper (125°C) end of a regular DS18B20 probe. We have linked available low and high temperature K-type thermocouples in the product page. 

We are pleased to announce that External Power Sensor Basic is now fully restocked and ready for immediate shipment.  The currently out of stock Outdoor Probe Thermocouple which we get a lot of inquiry about, is also expected to be back in stock in about 1 month; we have secured a key TI chip for reading thermocouple that has been out of stock since the pandemic.

We have also expanded IFTTT Wireless Tag service.  An important new feature is the addition of "All of applicable tags" (in addition to "Any of my tags") from tag choices for a number of triggers such as "moved", "opened", "too hot/cold", "temperature back to normal", "too wet/dry", "humidity back to normal", "back in range", "water no longer detected", "water detected".  

With "Any of my tags" chosen, the trigger fires when any of the tags produces the event.  But with "All of applicable tags", the trigger fires when all other tags under the tag manager a tag (that will be in the ingredient of the trigger) belongs to, are also in the specified state. For example with "Temperature returns to normal" trigger, all tags that have temperature monitoring enabled must be in "normal temperature" state for the trigger to fire.   For example with "water no longer detected" trigger, all water/leak sensors under your tag manager must be in "no water detected" state for the trigger to fire.  This allows implementing some automations in IFTTT with a few clicks that would have required complicated coding using KumoApp scripts.  

We also expanded IFTTT query "current tag state" to include "IsTooCold", "IsTooHot", "IsTempNormal" along with other new ingredients to allow complete access of all tag properties in your IFTTT filter code.  

URL calling has been essential for integrating Wireless Tags with all kinds of things. While other companies increasingly make it harder for you to build integration with 3rd party products (everything from Nest discontinuing their "Works with Nest" API, Wemo dropping their UPnP API, to IFTTT limiting the number of free applet per user to 3), with our URL calling and open and straightforward web API, we are cutting out the middle man (like IFTTT, Alexa, Google Home) and putting complete control into your hands when it comes to integration. 

Since almost all 3rd party web services use OAuth2 with their API, it is important that URL calling supports HTTP Authorization header for the access token.  Until now, you could already put the access token in front of the URL like

https://[access_token]@www.api_end_point.com/some_api  

for the system to send Authorization: Bearer [access_token], or

https://[login_name]:[password]@www.api_end_point.com/some_api  

for HTTP Basic authentication. Also, the KumoApp.httpCallExternal has been supporting adding arbitrary HTTP request headers through the 4th argument.  However, these features were not very visible, most people probably did not know it. 

Today, the URL calling feature was extended to allow users to easily add a number of common HTTP request headers:

The Web API LoadEventURLConfig and SaveEventURLConfig were also updated to add the field "headers_json" to allow using scripts and other automated ways to configure these headers. 

If you open more than 3~4 tabs of Wireless Tag Web interface (my.wirelesstag.net or mytaglist.com/eth depending on your tag manager) using Google Chrome or MS Edge (Chromium based) you may experience unusual slow loading.  This is due to Google Chrome limiting the number of "socket" to six per web site. There is no error message or status (the status message "waiting for available socket" is often times not displayed or visible), so you may have an impression our web site is very slow, while in reality it is not, as the slowness is not experienced on mobile apps or other non-Chromium based web browsers like Firefox and Safari on Macs. 

In order to provide the real time user experience of push notification and automatic update to the screen without relying on Google proprietary technologies such as Firebase, our web interface uses plain vanilla pending HTTP request (also known as "comet"), so it can work anywhere. There is no evidence that more than six pending HTTP requests would cause any adverse effect on your PC. In fact, until sometimes around 2020, Chrome did not impose this limitation. It sounds more like Google trying to force developers to use Firebase. 

To avoid above problems when using our Web interface, we recommend Firefox web browser, from Mozilla foundation, an independent organization not affiliated with "Big Tech", who has no hidden agenda except to keep the Internet free and open. 

We are currently offering limited quantities of "no motion" version of Wireless Tag Pro and Wireless Sensor Tag with 13-bit Temperature/Humidity at a discounted price.

During final assembly or each tag, we test functionality of the 3D compass based motion sensor one by one. These are the tags that failed the test; we load special firmware on them that disables the motion sensor. The app recognizes the special version and will not display buttons/options related to the disabled motion sensor. 

These are perfect fit if you do not need to use the motion / door open/close sensing functionality and are only looking to use it for temperature / humidity monitoring. These will be covered by our standard 1 year warranty for new tags. 

Australian Quality Care Pharmacy Program ("QCPP", standard AS 85000.2017) and "Strive for 5" mandate manual checking and record keeping of refrigerator temperature twice daily, once in the morning before business opens and once in the evening. 

Wireless Sensor Tags and Outdoor Probes provide automated email reporting of max, min, and average temperature, humidity, or ambient light which can be configured twice-daily (sent at 8AM and 8PM by default), daily, weekly, or monthly to satisfy this requirement with a simple click (acknowledgement by forwarding the email, for example). 

The email will contain all necessary information as well as direct link to view the temperature graph of the specific sensor for the specific date range of the report. 

We did not know anything about QCPP and only learned about this from our customers in Australia.  As we strive to make life easier for our customers we implemented the feature as soon as learning about it.  If you have any feature request like this please do not hesitate to leave a comment.  

We are shipping Outdoor Probes with updated firmware that fixes an issue that affects some units when used with DS18B20 probes inside freezer environment (-20°C/0°F). This environment causes battery internal resistance to increase which causes 1) false triggering of brown-out reset circuit intended to prevent flash memory/firmware corruption, this causes battery to die prematurely, 2) marginal timing in Maxim 1-wire communication with DS18B20 probe, causing glitches in reported temperature. 

To valid this fix, we have been running eight Outdoor Probes with DS18B20, some of which are customer returns that experienced these problems,  inside a -20°C freezer at ~1 min record interval. Click here to view the live temperature data from these 8 probes. You should not see any glitch or missing data from around May 4.  

If you have received Outdoor Probe and are experiencing these problems when used inside freezer, please create a support ticket to request firmware update (the board needs to be sent back, we will email you a prepaid return shipping label). 

Australia has been our second largest International customer base (second to Canada), however during the pandemic US post office (USPS) suspended all service to Australia, and people had to pay the more expensive shipment option offered by UPS and DHL.

We recently learned that USPS has resumed service (First Class International is resumed) to Australia, and we have re-enabled this cheaper and what used to be the most popular shipment method to Australia. 

Check out https://about.usps.com/newsroom/service-alerts/international/welcome.htm  for more details. 

Today we have rolled out a significant database optimization to all of our servers, which in our tests, improves graph loading time by as much as 2x on Web, iOS and Android apps. You do NOT need to install any app update for this to take effect. Enjoy! 

We have been offering free unlimited cloud storage for logged temperature, humidity, lux, and motion data since we first introduced Wireless Sensor Tags in 2012.  As data gets older they are moved from faster SSD storage to slower / cheaper HDD storage. We have noticed, as the data we store gets larger and larger, the graph loading time is not as fast as it used to be. Part of the optimization involves eliminating accessing the HDD when the tag is newer and do not contain old data. After this optimization, the graph loading speed feels as fast as it has ever been. Let us know what you think by adding comment to this post.  

In addition, we have improved user experience when accessing graph from web browsers on mobile devices. You should notice some buttons that were used to be hidden by overlapped texts are now accessible. A series of bugs were fixed:  panning by finger now actually works like panning by shift + mouse drag on desktop PCs: it will load new data as you pan outside of already loaded data. The "View Daily graph" button now works. Vertical scroll now works (while horizontal scrolls pans the graph) to allow accessing buttons below the graph such as "Download CSV", "Zoom To" by entering start/end date. 

Last month, surprisingly to us, we were able to source 8000pcs of LIS3MDL 3D compass IC from AVNET.com (although at $1.96/ea, vs. $0.637/ea we paid last time for the exact same chip).  This allowed us to resume production of our most popular product 13 bit temperature / humidity sensor tag. 

Since this product was first released in 2013, it has gone through many improvements in underlying design (new radio IC for longer range, new 3D compass IC, more fault tolerant firmware to keep connected, and to eliminate false motion alarm, false temperature reading / too hot/too cold alarms, and so on). The temperature resolution now is actually 14-bit, but we kept the original product name.

Meanwhile the customer-facing feature set remained the same, which kept providing value to so many people.  To show our commitment to lasting value in our products,  we have reduced the price (which was raised in response to the shortages of LIS3MDL in 2021) back to the same price it has been since 2013.

Despite its many short-comings, our 2nd gen Water/Soil-Moisture sensor has been a solid seller for many years. Yesterday we have sold the very last one of it. We realize that water leak detection is an important application for many of our customers. 

We are pleased to announce that Quad Water Leak Sensor is now available for immediate shipment this week (order it here).  We got the idea after talking with a customer who has bought tons of the 2nd gen Water sensor, and have been working on the product for over a year now. After many prototype iterations and a new clamshell (that itself went through 3~4 prototypes) to fit both this product and regular tags, everything is now finally ready. 

Application of this new product will not be limited to water leak detection. If you use tags to monitor fridge temperature and has encountered short battery life and other issues related to condensation damaging the tags, this product should also provide a big improvement for you. Because it uses a larger battery, CR2450 (620mAh vs. 225mAh of CR2032 used in regular tags), the battery change interval will be longer. Because it has high quality water and scratch resistant coating over the entire circuit board, condensation damage will completely be a thing of the past.  It is much smaller and less expensive than the Outdoor Probe which some of our customers were forced to choose to monitor fridge temperature to get longer battery life and resolve the condensation problem. 

If you have any feedback about this product please leave in the comment section. 

The global chip shortage is here to stay, and it is hitting us particularly hard. It has been challenge to source parts, many of them are out of stock until middle of 2022, and some do not even have availability forecast. For example, the 3D compass part from ST microelectronics (LIS3MDL) which a couple years ago we purchased at under $0.7/ea, now sells at whopping $26.6/ea (volume price) at the only distributor who currently has stock. We would place a backorder at another distributors and they would just cancel our order, citing no expected availability date from manufacturer. 

If you do not need the 3D compass angle based motion sensor capability, we suggest you choose the Wireless Tag Pro ALS or Accelerometer based regular tag which from our experience generally have more a consistent, longer battery life, due to the fact the 3D compass (LIS3MDL) has been hit-and-miss on its leakage current and quality coming out of ST's factory. This is probably also because it requires stringent special baking process before PCB assembly. 

Meanwhile, to keep existing stock of products who use this part for people who really need it, we have decided to implement a 7-10% increase on the price we have maintained since 2013, until the chip shortage situation is improved, hopefully in late 2022. 

Heavy users of Wireless Tag must have already noticed that since about a week ago the Web Interface on laptops have been receiving push notifications that are normally only delivered to Android and iOS app.

We do not use those annoying notification popup on task bar. It is simply the yellow bar displayed on the top of the web page. If the tag that generated the push is not visible the window will automatically scroll to it. 

If you leave the web browser window open, more and more yellow bars will be displayed one after another as push notifications come in. After you click on the bar to dismiss a notification, the next notification underneath it will be visible. Tag events / notification from ALL tag managers owned by the user will be queued and displayed here, even if the tag that generated the notification is not under the currently selected tag manager. In that case, a link "View" will be on a corner of the yellow bar, click on the link to switch to the tag manager and focus on the tag, without losing the stack of the unread notifications.

Today we are pleased to announce availability of a low-cost version of accelerometer-based tag, which has been out of stock for some time. Our customer has been saying it is perfect for detecting mail arriving at the mail box. 

It uses 3D accelerometer instead of 3D compass to sense motion and door open-close (works only on vertical door like garage door and mailbox lids). The benefits are

• Immediate notification: The accelerometer measures acceleration many times a second resulting in virtually immediate notification.
• Less false alarms: The accelerometer is not susceptible to electro-magnetic interference from nearby appliances turning on/off. This allows you to increase the sensitivity to detect small vibration, such as dryer running/not running, not possible with regular 3D compass based motion sensor tags. 
• Two types of motion event: "Moved" and "Carried away": The tag can distinguish short vibration that lasts less than a second from longer movement lasting more than 2 seconds. 
• The app now supports configuring measurement frequency from 1Hz to 400Hz to balance between detecting fast movement and battery life. 

This new product is based on the temperature-only standard Wireless Tag instead of Wireless Tag Pro like before. It focuses on detecting motion, and does not integrate high resolution temperature / humidity sensor nor on-board memory like the Pro. In return you get lower price and longer battery life due to the removal of components that are not core to your use-scenario: detecting mail arrival, washer/dryer done running, any kind of lid open/close, garage doors, and more! 

Available here for immediate shipment!

Wireless Tags now support both Honeywell Home (such as T9) and Total Connect Comfort (commonly known as Honeywell WiFi, such as this) thermostats! Just add them like a regular Wireless Tag from the Wireless Tag web interface or mobile app, like below.

Now you can use the "Set At" option as below to enable temperature monitoring on a Wireless Tag. Automatically, when that tag is reporting temperature too low, heat will be turned on, and if the tag is reporting normal temperature, heat will be turned off.

Wireless Tags now provides integration with Honeywell Home thermostats (T1 to T9 series, Lyric, Round thermostats) using their official API. Using the same steps to add/associate a sensor tag, these thermostats can be added to your "tag list", allowing you to

• Check temperature, humidity and change heat/cool setpoint from an web browser without using the Honeywell Home iOS/Android app. 
• Turn fan to circulate or auto mode (except thermostats without user controllable fan mode like T6)
• The Honeywell API provides live streaming of temperature/humidity/setpoint data through Microsoft Azure EventHub. This allows us to display and record temperature and humidity data from the thermostat the same way as tags (except resolution is limited to 1°F probably intentionally, by Honeywell), allowing you to view the historical temperature graph, and a number of other ways to access them like through our Wireless Tag Alexa skill. 
• Using the "Set At" option, you can apply the heat/cool setpoint to any tag of yours, and if the temperature at the chosen tag becomes lower than the heat setpoint, or higher than the cool setpoint, the system automatically adjusts the thermostat such that it turns the heat or AC on (unless the thermostat is set by you to off mode).  This essentially makes a Wireless Tag work as an external room sensor of your thermostat.
• You can also run a number of KumoApp scripts designed to work with a thermostat, like "When any of the window or door is opened, turn off AC/heat." and "When all of the window or door is closed, automatically resume AC/heat."

Thanks to our long range low power wireless technology, many of our customers install Wireless Tags inside medical and industrial fridges in hospitals and restaurants, ensuring food quality and safe-guarding valuable merchandise from spoilage. Temperature and humidity data are automatically logged centrally in cloud, satisfying HACCP reporting requirements. 

You can pull up the temperature, humidity, ambient light live reports from any web browser anywhere without installing any app. You can also add markers by pressing "M" key. You can click on the marker to assign/edit comments. 

Because the markers and comments are now stored in cloud along with the temperature data, they automatically appear on other computers, when you open the data using the shareable link you generate.  Anyone with the link can export it into a PDF or image, or download the raw data in CSV format to create a report to satisfy your country's regulatory requirements.  But only the logged in user with access to the tag can edit or delete the marker/comments by clicking on comment or the "X" circle. 

Today we are happy to announce that the Wireless Tag iOS app since version 4.2 now fully supports dark mode in iOS 13.  

Also, for International customers, you should see UPS shipping rate to Canada, Australia/NZ, and European countries has dropped significantly thanks to a recent agreement we've reached with UPS. For example it should now cost less than $28 for 1lb UPS Worldwide Expedited to Australia, which used to cost about $45. Due to COVID-19, we have noticed longer than usual USPS (post office) International shipping delay to most countries except Canada, so we encourage you to choose UPS if you can shipping to AU/NZ/GB. 

The last couple months we have been working hard updating both our iOS and Android app. A main reason is to use the hardware accelerated (OpenGL on Android and Metal on iOS) charting library SciChart which is super fast even when plotting huge amounts of data (10+ tags on the same screen for example). Its recent release in April 2020 features spline to connect data points for aesthetically pleasing presentation. We have finished this for Wireless Tag iOS app at version 4.x which was released about a month ago. 

While our iOS app has always had solid reputation being functional and smooth (not surprising considering the thousands of man-hour we have put into its development since 2012) and it is written in Objective C which is a low level programming language / native code, we did not put too much resources into developing "native" Android app until now.

Today we are pleased to announce our first major Android app update (stable at version 3.1.14) since mid 2019.  The assumptions we made when designing this update are:

• You would do the work setting up the tags typically on a PC (associate, configuring arm/diarm schedule, temperature logging interval, monitoring thresholds, setting up notifications, etc)
• You mostly use mobile apps to check recent event history and  temperature/humidity, and occasionally sending temperature report or graph to other people. Some limited amount of setup fine tuning. 

The app now has 3 pages switched by swiping, the 3rd page is still a wrapper of the HTML web interface like the old 2.x version, therefore you can do all the setup you do on an PC/web browser with the app if you want.

Pressing back button takes you to 2nd page, which is completely written in native code. It gives you a glance of all the important information, except motion events, which is on the 1st page, along with temperature events.  The app will only load data from the cloud when you try to view it.  As soon as you view the 1st page and scroll down to load enough data into the past, when you go back to the 2nd page they will appear also on the graphs, helping you identifying reason behind temperature/humidity changes (such as door open/close). These should be familiar if you have used iOS version of our app. 

If you press on the graph in 2nd page you can access all of the stats / graph features without going to the web user interface. On the other hand, if you like to setup a tag, just tap on the current temperature display (left of the graph) on 2nd page, it will take you directly to the section for that tag in the web interface. If you tap on the icon it will allow you to assign a picture directly. 

If you quit the app (e.g. by keep pressing back button) when the chosen page is not the web (3rd page), next time the app is launched, the web interface will not be loaded at app launch, and only loaded when you swiped into it, so you should notice the app launches much faster than old version of the app which required loading the HTML interface to do anything.  

If you have many tags, you can enter search term in the search box, then keep the search box open and swipe left/right and the event & web interface will automatically only show the tags matching the search. Some people mentioned they wanted to have a per tag motion event history display. For this, just enter the name of tag in search box (the autocomplete will help you enter the full name with a few key strokes) then swipe to the event history if you are not already on it. 

If you have any suggestions, comments, or like to correct our "assumptions" above on how the app is used, please leave a comment. 

Per requests from multiple customers, we have implemented daily/weekly/bi-weekly/monthly temperature/humidity/ambient light email report feature. It is disabled by default, and must be enabled from "Notification and Reports" menu in iOS app and under the chevron(>) button from Web/Android interface as below: