Elitech Digital Temperature Data Logger Recorder with Glycol Bottle Medical Refrigerator Monitor, RC-4G

This small device is excellent at recording and charting the temperature, either stand alone or with probe attached. You can program alarms for out of range temps, set it to record at intervals needed, up to 16,000 samplings recorded! You can even set a delay before recording. Rechargeable internal battery. Convenient USB data/charge connection, and the application is very easy to use and understand. It's hard to believe this very accurate scientific device is so AFFORDABLE!I use it to verify the temperature of probiotic yogurt I incubate. Turns out my 'cooker' runs a degree or two high so I now know I need to set it lower accordingly.I am SO GLAD I thought to choose this one!

I have been using this device continuously for a week now, and have to say I am extremely satisfied in its performance. I needed a data logger to monitor the temperature and humidity in my refrigerator, and given the cheap price and good reviews on their other products, I figured it was worth giving Elitech a go.The device itself is very easy to use. It has a single button, which you press to begin recording, and to cycle through the current, maximum and minimum temperature values on the LED display. It therefore lets me crudely monitor the conditions without having to upload all the data.The software is a little clunky, but lets you do all the essentials - configure the device, stop recording, upload the data from the device, and erase memory. I have found it more useful to use my own scripts to analyze the data, but the pre-packaged software does let the non-programmer visualize the temperature and humidity over time, and zoom in to get a closer look.The biggest issue I had with operating the device, was identifying which driver to install for my mac. The instructions were not immediately apparent, and it was only when attempting to install the python module that I came across the solution. I installed both the CP210x USB-UART bridge VCP driver and the CH340 Serial Driver, and it was only after installing the second that the software was able to recognize the device.I have not had any issues yet with operating it continuously at 0-10°C (and once briefly below freezing). Once I have satisfactorily monitored all the different regions of my fridge, I may be daring enough to throw the thing into the freezer and see how it fares. But I know that batteries and sub-zero temperatures are not good friends, so don't have high expectations.

You have to install proprietary (free) software in order to use this device. This is on contrast to some other USB-based devices that allow you to access the device as if it was a thumb drive and simply copying a data file. You also have to use the maker's software to change settings like how often the temperature/humidity sample is taken. The ability to control the device itself is limited pretty much to just staring and stopping the logging. Finally the data can only be saved as a PDF, a complex Excel spreadsheet, or an archive format that can only be read by the maker's app.If you have no issues with these requirements and limitations, the device itself is easy to use and works well. My first use case was to see how long it takes for a new air condition to cool down a bedroom to the desired temperature. For recording the temperature, either the internal sensor can be used or a plug-in sensor is supplied. Unfortunately the device will not record readings from both the internal and external temperature sensor. But then that would make this a 3 channel data recorder (internal temp, internal humidity, external temp) which I suppose is asking a bit much give the relatively low price. But it would have allowed doing things like comparing inside and outside temperatures for things like rooms and refrigerators.A tip on using the graph view on the application. There are very few timestamps displayed on the X-axis and you cannot change this (AFAICT). But if you place your mouse cursor on the curve itself, a pop-up will be displayed showing the recorded value and timestamp at that point in the curve. A better X-axis scale would still be nice to have.

The product works as long as it is plugged into a USB port. When you disconnect it from the USB port, it will take about 3 temperature measurements and then quits working. The software is circa 1990's style and certainly NOT user friendly. Reminds me of an old home brew MSDOS program (the default installation directory is Root). The English documentation is scant at best, and written at about the U.S. 4th grade level. It takes awhile to figure out how the product and software work, and the documentation itself will not help much with that. After 2+ weeks of trying to get this product to work I'm returning it. Don't waste your money.

Super simple to setup and use. Can't speak to longevity since I've only had them a few days but wow super simple and just running with the default setting of one reading per 15 minutes logged suits my needs just fine. The SW does it's job but is not super flexible (I would have liked for example an ability to annotate the line charts with notes on key events along the way but alas). All in all, highly recommend if you have a need to simply monitor temperature. I never calibrated mine, checked accuracy against a reference, or even verified repeatability but, the data I'm getting looks plenty reasonable to me so I'm declaring it good enough and supposing that the unit is within the rated spec. My initial use was to monitor temp of my fermentation process for home winemaking (I and NOT recommending dropping the sensor into your must - I did not do that) so for that purpose seems like this'll serve me well for years. I'll probably find lots of uses for these little gems now that I have them (bought two).