Tinkering; Like Guntering for the Connected Generation.

The Sonoff device you have works with the same DS18B20 temperature probes I'm using, they are addressable so you can connect multiple probes to it. Although you may need custom firmware on it, like Tasmota or ESPHome etc.

Thanks very much just took a notion one evening to send it in, got a call after a few days and it was in the next edition. They must be short on their labour saving ideas 😁.

Handy having your own scales alright. I presume you are still manually entering the weights from the scales to the sheets?

Has the clock a serial port on it? (could be internal as in needing to remove cover to access, but should be in the manual)

I put a cattle scales together after joining the BEEP scheme. Was considering utilizing the the serial port on scales to automatically read the weight into an excel sheet and now with compulsory EID tags adding an EID tag reader would completely automate recording.

Not sure where the fourth core comes in, it that scenario. Is it just 2 going from earth pin to chassis ground?

The correct config for those plugs is one earth, one permeant live and one ignition switch aux live. But in practice the vast majority are 1 permanent live and earth. You can have 2 lives with one earth without issue, but it is the load that needs consideration as long as you don't overload the pins or the wiring you won't have a problem. There can be different amp ratings between manufacturers and the amp rating of the small pin will be about half of the larger one.

If there was a question in there about the amp rating of the earth line, the current on the earth pin will be the sum of the 2 live pins, doubling up with the earth wire will increase the current rating but just using a gauge wire suitable to the application is probably the best in practice. Basically make sure you are not overloading any of the pins or wires to avoid a fire.

The farmOS software I referred to earlier stores all data to an SQL database.

A database is definitely the way to go but spread sheets can be use full too, information can always be parsed from a sheet to a database also.

Are you using MS Access yourself?

I have no intention of taking that approach, as Patsy pointed out web scraping is too prone to breaking due to format changes and security measures actively taken by sites to block it. Just simply a program to process the exportable CSV files from DAFM, could possibly be done with Excel and macros alone at least in the early stages but it may be developed further and possibly become a custom module for with farmOS later.

So basically initially read my herd profile from the exported DAFM CSV file and compare to one exported from farmOS and reformat and parse only the changes to be reimported into farmOS as births and purchases, and create a to do list of animals to be marked as on farm deaths and sales.

I have direct access to the SQL database of my farmOS instance so much of the processing there can be eventually completely automated on that side.