Looking for kinda strange device

[Phil21]

I was wondering if some place makes a "header board" for 3-wire fans (tachometer fans).

I would like to install tachometer fans in my PSU units, and just general HDD/etc. cooling fans in my servers which are co-located. I currently remotely monitor and graph fan speeds and CPU temps remotely for the on-board stuff. But, I did have a system go down a while back because the fan in the PSU failed, woulda been easy to spot if I was monitoring.

Thinking either PCI card or something that can monitor like 4+ fans. If it had extra temp sensor connectors so I could monitor temps in various locations of the case that would be cool as well, but not neccessary.

It would either need to have software available for linux, or have a good spec on how to access the info so I could write a quickie app to check temps. Could even connect to like the serial port or something (I'd think that would be a lot easier).

any ideas?

-Phil

 

[Fandu]

You'd need to ask someone with better knowledge that I, but what if you connect the monitoring wire from the fan to the RX line on a serial port. I think it would be relativly easy to write a small VB program to monitor the serial port. If suddenly you stop seeing pulses on the RX line, start the alarms. Maybe?

 

[NuovoTech]

Not quite what ya want, but look here: FanBus

 

[Phil21]

hmm, good idea.

I don't have much knowledge on the way the serial ports work, but would it be possible to monitor most of the wires? I mean.. 1 fan per serial port really wouldn't be very realistic.

But your right, I could easily without a problem monitor that with perl.

Hmm, anyone know? 😛

-Phil

 

[Phil21]

Any other ideas?


fanbus is great, but I'm more interested in the monitoring aspect of things. I can solder and stuff myself to make the connectors. 🙂

-Phil