Setting Up Your Temperature Sensors

Recording the temperature of your fridges and freezers is an essential part of food safety. By using Safe Food Pro’s Temperature Sensors, you will be able to record and display this important information automatically!

Safe Food Pro Temperature Sensors are temperature recording devices that can be placed inside of your fridges, freezers or hot holding. The sensors record the temperature inside your equipment and display this information in a graph on your dashboard. 

The sensors operate between -55°C and +125°C.

Safe Food Pro Temperature Sensors are not sold as a continuous Temperature Monitoring solution. While they can be configured to send an email notification when the temperature goes out of range, this email will repeat at most every 2 hours while the temperature is out of range. We advise checking the readings on the dashboard or the equipment itself if you receive one of these emails, to check that the temperature is as expected, e.g. the fridge is in a defrost cycle. For more information check out the Temperature Out of Range Notifications article. 

In this Article:

What you’ll need: 

  • Hub - Make sure you place this (1). in an area free of obstructions, (2) or high off the ground or screwed into your wall so you can get the strongest possible sensor readings. 
  • Sensor(s) - These goes in your Fridge/Freezer. When you set up the sensors, mount them away from the door and high up so the signal is not being blocked by items on shelves, or people.
You can purchase Safe Food Pro Temperature Sensors from: https://shop.safefoodpro.co.nz/. If you get stuck on any steps below please contact support@safefoodpro.co.nz. 

Installing the Sensor Hub:

When setting up the Hub, place the sensors directly next to the Hub. Once you've completed all of the steps below and have seen the sensors are reading, then we recommend to move them into the Fridges/Freezers. After moving the sensors to your Fridge/Freezer, keep an eye on your Dashboard to check the readings are still successful and there was no interference between the Fridge and the Hub. 

  1. Find a place by your internet router that's free of obstructions, keep your sensors next to the Hub while you are setting up
  2. Screw on RF aerial to your Hub and the sensor aerials to your Sensors 
  3. Connect the power supply to your Hub and turn the Hub on. This makes the power light go Red 

  4. Take out the LAN cable. Connect this to the Hub (in the LAN port) and your Internet Router. This should make the net light flash green every few seconds. The RF light will flash blue only when the sensors send data every 15 minutes.

  5. All done! Simple as that!

To test this further, grab one of your sensors and click the power button on the sensor. After a couple of seconds, you will see the Blue Light flash indicating that a reading has reached the hub!

Installing the 4G/LTE Sensor Hub (WH-3): 

Your 4G hub arrives with a pre-paid $20 SIM Card on the Spark network. Depending on your usage, this can power your sensors for up to 7 months. After which point, you can top up your SIM card (in the SIM card slot of your hub), or purchase a new pre-paid Spark SIM card.

  1. Screw on RF & 4G aerials supplied in the box to your Hub, they are specific for RF & 4G.
  2. Connect the power supply to your Hub and turn the Hub on. This makes the power light go Red.
  3. These 4G Hubs are setup to operate with the Spark network out-of-the-box. (unless you have organised for your own SIM)
  4. Ensure that where the placement of the Hub is, there is Mobile Reception (this will be SIM specific. E.g. Spark network coverage may be differ from 2Degrees coverage) 
  5. All done! The 4G Hub is simple as that!

If you want to use another SIM Card provider, please contact support@safefoodpro.com. The hub will need to be returned to MonitorPro to be reconfigured. 

Installing the Sensors: TS2 and TS3

Once you have finished the installation, you'll need to allocate the Sensor to a piece of equipment (Fridge/Freezer) in Safe Food Pro. 

  1. Go to Equipment 
  2. Here you can either add your Sensor to an already existing fridge/freezer by clicking the 'pencil' icon OR you can click the green 'plus' icon to add a new fridge/freezer
  3. Scroll down to the bottom to the Wireless Monitoring section 
  4. Click the "Sensor ID", then select the ID that matches your Sensor from the drop-down list. Each Sensor has it's own Sensor ID.

     

  5. Click the Sensor Active box to indicate that the Sensor is active
  6. Edit the "Out of Range Duration" to your preferred time (read more about notifications here) 
  7. Click Save
  8. The Fridge/Freezer using the Monitor Pro Sensor will then be marked with a 'sensor' icon on the Equipment Page 

Viewing Your Readings:

  1. Go to your Safe Food Pro Dashboard 
  2. Check your sensors are sending readings, this can take a few minutes for the sensors to pop up on the Dashboard Graph

  3. Once you are happy with all of your sensors showing up, pop your sensors in the Fridge/Freezer it's allocated to 
  4. Continue to keep an eye on your sensors once you've moved them into the equipment to make sure they are still sending readings.
  5. It is a good idea to check the signal strength is ok.  Anything greater than -100dBm is good.  If the signal strength is closer to -120dBm try moving the hub closer to the sensor.


Zoom in on Dashboard Graph

To get a better view of your sensor readings simply: 

  1. Go to your Dashboard 
  2. Click the Sensor ID on the right of the Temperature Sensing Graph 
  3. This will open a pop up of the temperature reading for that sensor 
  4. Then click and drag on the field below to zoom into that date 

Note: It's really important that you set up your Temperature Sensor Notifications.

Printing Temperature Sensor Readings

You can also view these readings on the reports page by clicking on the Reports tab, the "Sensor Data" button. In the top right you can select the date range for which you want to view the data. You will see a graph of the data for the selected period. Click the print icon to print off your readings. 

On the Reports Summary page, you can view any temperature out of range warnings by scrolling down to the "Exceptions (blue notes)"  report. This will tell you the date and time the recorded temperature was taken, and the out of range temperature that was recorded.

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