Bespoke Devices for the Datacenter [/ˈbespoke dɪˈvaɪsɪz fər ðə ˈdatasenter/] n - Not every trouble in a data center owns a commercial remedy. Sometimes the gap is too small for a vendor to heed, sometimes the integration too particular, and sometimes the right sensor is priced tenfold its worth. There custom devices enter: a Raspberry Pi, an Arduino, a cheap sensor, and a few hours of labor may displace a spreadsheet of manual checks or a six-figure purchase order.

These pages track the whole of the making: from the first notion, through the On the Making of Bespoke Devices, to the On Early Detection such devices make possible.

Wherein They Excel

• Filling sensor gaps. [/ˈfɪllɪng ˈsɛnsɒr ˈgæps/] n Vendors measure what they sell. A custom device measures what you truly care for: the temperature behind one particular rack, the vibration upon a chiller pump, or whether a door that should stand closed stands open.
• Bridging protocols. [/ˈbrɪdgɪng ˈprɒtɒkɒls/] n An Arduino with a Modbus shield can make an old chiller a participant in your modern monitoring stack, without replacing it.
• Cheap redundancy. [/ˈkhɪːp ˈrɛdʌndænki/] n A Raspberry Pi watching what a costly BMS sensor watches grants a second opinion for the price of a sandwich.
• Rapid experiments. [/ˈræpɪd ˈɛxpɛrɪmɛnts/] n Ere you buy a fleet of industrial IoT nodes, you may prove the concept with a Single-board computer and a breadboard.

Where to Begin

• Raspberry Pi in the datacenter [/ˈraspberri ˈpi ˈin ˈthe ˈdatasenter/] n - the smallest Linux host as a platform for monitoring and control.
• On the Making of Bespoke Devices [/ˈbuildɪŋ ˈkustom ˈdatasenter ˈdevises/] n - the art of deciding what to build, sourcing parts, contriving a prototype, and proving it.
• On Early Detection [/ˈearli ˈdetekʃən ˈsystems/] n - how custom devices espy failure points before they ripen into outages.
• Efficient datacenter case studies [/ˈeffisient ˈdatasenter ˈkase ˈstudies/] n - how the greatest operators have pressed efficiency, and what lessons carry over to small bespoke builds.

The tools and protocols that recur are recorded in their own entries: Raspberry Pi, Arduino, Single-board computer, Temperature sensor, Current transformer, Modbus, LoRaWAN, and Power over Ethernet.

Part of the making thread in Crafts.