"RJH" wrote in message
...
After my door open accident I bought a digital thermometer with an
alarm -
also make sure the freezer's operating within range (-18-22C).

Perhaps I ought to get one! And one for the fridge.

The one I've got is a clone of this:

https://www.nisbets.co.uk/hygiplas-f...ith-alarm/f314

I paid a lot less than that. I taped the wire for the sensor between the
body
and door, and draped the sensor in the middle of the freezer. Not
especially
elegant but seems to work.

Because of the difficulty of getting a wifi freezer thermometer to work
(getting cable from sensor inside to transmitter outside the Faraday cage of
the freezer, without affecting the door seal), we have a low-tech solution.

We have a couple of TPlink HS110 remote-control mains plugs which also
monitor energy usage. I found a routine that runs on a spare Raspberry Pi
which polls these plugs, producing a graph of usage over time. We've got
into the habit of checking that graph every day, looking for any
abnormalities in the graph; the normal usage is a steady cycle of m minutes
on and n minutes off, punctuated by less frequent gaps and higher peaks as
the freezers go through their defrost-and-refreeze frost-free cycle.

We set this up after one of our freezers in the garage stopped working.
Luckily I noticed after about 12 hours when I went to put something in
there, so we had a mass cook-up and refreeze of all the meat joints which
were slightly soft but still pretty cold. We lived on a diet of prawn toast
and other Chinese starters for a couple of days, because those were the only
things that couldn't be cooked and then re-frozen. I think the only thing my
wife had to throw away was a box of ice creams, so we got away lightly.

And before anyone says it, yes the freezer that broke *was* a Beko and *was*
rated to work in winter ambient temperature. It had just packed up - I
traced the wire right back to the sealed motor unit and there was power
getting to the motor, but still it was not turning, so failed motor winding
or failed thermostat within the motor/compressor housing. I couldn't find
any other wire going to a remote thermostat elsewhere inside the freezer.

Interestingly, the big Beko freezer that we have outside (replacement for
the one that failed) uses a lot less electricity than the smaller one that
we have indoors. I wonder if it's more efficient or just because the ambient
temperature is lower. We'll see how things change in the hot summer -
assuming we get one!