Email alerts on sensor thresholds in Raspberry Pi - Mini Project: Build & Apply

Email alerts on sensor thresholds

📖 Scenario: You have a Raspberry Pi connected to a temperature sensor. You want to monitor the temperature and get an email alert when it goes above a certain limit.

🎯 Goal: Build a simple Python program that reads temperature data, checks if it crosses a threshold, and sends an email alert if it does.

📋 What You'll Learn

Create a dictionary called sensor_data with temperature readings.

Create a variable called threshold with the value 30.

Use a for loop with variables time and temp to iterate over sensor_data.items() and collect times when temperature exceeds the threshold.

Print the list of times when temperature crossed the threshold.

💡 Why This Matters

🌍 Real World

Monitoring sensors on a Raspberry Pi is common in home automation and safety systems. Sending alerts helps users react quickly to important changes.

💼 Career

Understanding how to process sensor data and trigger alerts is useful for roles in IoT development, embedded systems, and automation engineering.

1

Create sensor data dictionary

Create a dictionary called sensor_data with these exact entries: '10:00': 25, '11:00': 28, '12:00': 31, '13:00': 29, '14:00': 35.

Raspberry Pi

# Create the sensor_data dictionary with given time and temperature readings
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use curly braces {} to create a dictionary with the exact keys and values.

2

Set temperature threshold

Create a variable called threshold and set it to 30.

Raspberry Pi

sensor_data = {'10:00': 25, '11:00': 28, '12:00': 31, '13:00': 29, '14:00': 35}
# Create the threshold variable with value 30
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Just assign the number 30 to the variable named threshold.

3

Find times when temperature exceeds threshold

Create an empty list called alert_times. Use a for loop with variables time and temp to iterate over sensor_data.items(). Inside the loop, if temp is greater than threshold, append time to alert_times.

Raspberry Pi

sensor_data = {'10:00': 25, '11:00': 28, '12:00': 31, '13:00': 29, '14:00': 35}
threshold = 30
# Create alert_times list and add times when temperature > threshold
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Remember to create an empty list first. Then use a for loop with time, temp to check each temperature.

4

Print alert times

Write a print statement to display the alert_times list.

Raspberry Pi

sensor_data = {'10:00': 25, '11:00': 28, '12:00': 31, '13:00': 29, '14:00': 35}
threshold = 30
alert_times = []
for time, temp in sensor_data.items():
    if temp > threshold:
        alert_times.append(time)
# Print the alert_times list
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use print(alert_times) to show the list of times when temperature was above the threshold.