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Maintaining proper heat and humidity in your hermit crab habitat, or crabitat, is vital to the survival of your pet hermit crabs. Monitoring can be done with standard guages but if you are looking to automate monitoring I have some products to share!
Thermostats can be used to control your heat pad(s) by turning them off when the desired temperature has been reached and turning them back on as needed to maintain your target temperature. This can reduce your electricity usage and possible prolong the life of your heat pad.
I live in Southern Illinois and our spring weather means one day I need the air conditioning on and the next day I need the heat on. With thermostats monitoring my tanks I don’t have to worry about my tanks overheating if I have the windows open and the house is warmer than normal. If my air conditioning were to stop working while I was away from home the thermostat would turn off my heat pad. That doesn’t prevent the tank from overheating due to the increased ambient temperature but it will slow down the process. The Inkbird app will alert me to the high temperature so I could send someone over to address the issue ASAP.
The Inkbird ITC-306T WiFi has dual outlets that allows it to control two heat pads. There is only one probe so monitoring two separate tanks would not work. The 306T connects to the Inkbird app for real time notifications even when you are away from home. I have been using this model for several years and am happy with its performance. Occasionally the probe will trigger an alarm due to humidity. Typically I reset the alarm and do nothing but you can temporarily remove the probe and allow it to dry for 24 hours before placing it back in your crabitat.
The Inkbird ITC-308T WiFi has dual outlets to one to control a heat pad and one to control a cooling device. It connects to the Inkbird app for real time notifcations even when you aren’t at home. I have this unit also and plan to test it with a small fan to determine if it would be useful for folks living in the tropics who battle too much heat versus too little heat.
The Inkbird IBS M2 WiFi Gateway connects to as many as 9 remote sensors and monitors not only heat but humidity too! That’s a game-changer for a hermit crab keeper. The gateway is fully controlled by the Inkbird app. I’ve been waiting for a product like this for a long time!
I recently purchased the IBS M2 Inkbird Gateway with 3 sensors, one for each of my crab tanks. I was pretty excited to see the app includes an adjustment for temperature and humidity to reflect the results of your calibration tests.
What does that mean?
It means once you have calibrated the sensors for humidity and determine the variance in the device you can adjust the readout in the app instead of remembering it and mentally adjusting when you check the readings. You can set this on the gateway and on each sensor individually. SWEEET! My sensors were only off about 1%.
Each sensor takes 2 AAA batteries which are not included. The gateway comes with a USB cable and power brick.
Features I’m Stoked About
- Calibration control settings
- Alarms can be enabled or disabled on the gateway and each sensor individually.
- The recording interval on each sensor can be set individually.
- Alarms trigger immediately regardless of the recording interval.
- Each sensor has an opening to make it easy to mount or hang. I use a zip tie to hang them in my tanks securely.
- Support for up to nine sensors per gateway means I can add multiple sensors to my crabitats or monitor nine individual crabitats. (9 crab tanks is totally normal, right?!)
- The app tracks values over time so you can view the historical data from the sensors.
- The gateway is easy to read with large characters.
- The gateway shows your home readings on the left and can be set to cycle through all of your sensors automatically on the right side.
- The ability to set, check, control, monitor everything from the Inkbird app. If you are an Inkbird fan like I am you can group your products logically and choose your own naming format. (IE: Crab room, Tank 1, Tank 2, Baby Tank, Exotic Tank etc)
