Multi seeds or multi addresses for sensors

Question

Just pretend that I am the owner of 100 weather sensors. Do I have to create and handle 100 seeds? I think it would be easier to create 1 seed with 100 addresses and give one to each sensor. Than I can easily check online the balances of each device. But what happens if I want to cash out 20 MIOTA out of the seed? Which device gets a new address because of the security issue? How do I know from wich address these 20 MIOTA come from?

Answer 1

As https://iotasupport.com/how-addresses-are-used-in-IOTA.shtml explains:

The generated addresses are part of a sequence of one time(!) keys generated from a single seed. Using multiple addresses of one seed in parallel is generally not a good idea and not the right way to use them. As @Zauz already explained, use one seed per "sensor" and transfer the funds to the company account automatically.

Answer 2

Obviously, there are a lot of solutions to your problem but I think best practice would be to give each device it's own seed and additionally store all the seeds in a local database in your company so that you can check their balances and withdraw from their account if needed. The withdrawal would work automatically.
e.g. you have an interface where you see all of the devices, their balances and a button "Transfer to company address/account" with which you can automatically withdraw from the robot to your main company address.

This wouldn't result in a security issue, each device could generate their own addresses and you would still have access to the revenues.