Any idea/news on when the Bluetooth API will be released?
–Sam
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No ETA on this yet, Sam.
Any news on this front?
The API documentation still says “coming soon” under the BLE heading.
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Publishing the BLE spec is still on our road map but is not currently a priority. The vast majority of developers make use of the remote API (REST & WS). Those requiring local access are using the UDP interface (ideally as a back-up to the remote API, since it provides more and better data).
What is it you want to do over BLE? If you have a compelling use case, we can consider raising the priority.
I have a use case where the bluetooth api would be helpful. I am building an integration with my racing software and want to use the tempest weather station. I could use the UDP api but this is a problem in remote situations where my customers do not have wifi networks in their racing trailers. Most don’t even have Internet. Bluetooth would give them the ability to easily connect to the hub rather than setting up a wifi or installing additional PC based virtual router software like Connectify Hotspot.
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That is indeed a good use case. Thanks for the input!
Hello, i have been using UDP for access data, we are in a instance where we also need BLE to access data (for an agriculture application), any news about this, isn’t supported yet?
Waiting for response
Thank you in advance.
Franco
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@dsj - my company has a use case this as well, we are trying to integrate Tempest into our off grid water quality monitoring systems as additional data, but our devices only have cellular/ble connectivity and low voltage power, so using the hub is not an option. Being able to pull data via Bluetooth directly from the tempest to our boards would be amazing. However, full disclosure, we have a timeline on this project and if this isn’t going to be available soon we will have to move on to other options.
This sounds like an interesting project, but it is my understanding that any Bluetooth API will facilitate communication with the hub, but not with the Tempest device itself. The Tempest does not have a Bluetooth chip, and instead communicates with the hub using a 915 MHz radio link. If you can’t use a hub, I don’t think the Bluetooth API is going to help you.
I can work with 915mhz rf actually. We have a lorawan adapter that uses this band.
It is my understanding that there is processing done in the hub. I know calibration information doesn’t follow the device as it is lost when moving a device to a different hub. I’ll be surprised if WF releases the encoding of the data between the Tempest sensor and hub. Why can’t you use the Bluetooth from the hub? It is very low power so shouldn’t be much of a load.
It’s not the Bluetooth power, the problem is powering the hub via 110vac which isn’t available at our locations (usually a half mile deep into the woods or so).
Basically I don’t have space in our setup to put in a 12v battery and 110 inverter just to power this hub. :-/
It runs on 5VDC, not 110VAC.
Ok. That is better but still would be an always on device that wouldn’t work with our existing power setup (small 6v panel and 2ah lipo). I guess either way it would require a larger panel and battery. Was hoping to be able to wake our device from sleep and poll the tempest and go back to sleep like we do with every other sensor we interface with. Anyway, thanks for the help, I’ll keep looking for alternative solutions.
That would be energy efficient. Maybe you could contact Weather Flow directly to work out a special interface deal.
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Hi @ahastings . As others have shared, the BLE spec wouldn’t help your use case, since you’d still need the Hub.
While we do intend to to offer “light commercial” devices in the future that would be more suitable to your use case, the current Tempest system is aimed squarely at the home user.
If you want to sample say, once every 6 hours, you could easily just cut the power to the hub, boot it up every 6 hours, wait a while and retrieve the results. The tempest doesn’t buffer data for that long, but you could for leave the hub running for a few minutes and average its measurements during that period. or enable wifi for that period as well and it might send all the data to the servers using your cellular connection. You can retrieve the data from weatherflow’s servers using the api.
Did you ever get this to work? I have crew chief pro and I thought this might be an inexpensive solution for the required weather data