Telect, a Washington State supplier of data center components, announced a new product for monitoring air temperature in data centers: a chameleon plastic strip.

The company’s C degree Flow strip – made of a special plastic invented by the company – attaches to a data center rack and changes color as temperature changes. This allows for quick-glance monitoring of air temperature in the environment and tracking movement of cold air across the room.

Paul Knight, VP of product development at Telect, said the strip was a simple solution to the complex problem of data center cooling.

“We invented the plastic with data center best practices in mind. Not only can inlet temperatures of racks be seen, but temperatures across a rack can be increased by knowing where the cold air is going,” Knight said.

Telect is offering the patent-pending strip as an accessory to its data center racks.

The vendor is suggesting an unorthodox approach to data center temperature monitoring. A more common method is to use network-attached (wired or wireless) temperature sensors that feed temperature data into central monitoring software.