I have a Tempest Weatherflow station in place and absolutely love it, such a nice piece of hardware. Here in Switzerland where I live the sun isnt strong enough to charge the internal battery during Winter. My station went into power saving modes 1,2 in Mid november and the voltage dropped to 2.36V. I recently got my power booster and only use it on AC-power, no batteries installed. It quickly charged the battery to stable 2.77V since around 10 days. Today I noticed that the battery discharged a bit and is now on 2.73V.
I cannot determine if the power booster is not charging anymore because it is defective or the station decided to discharge. The solar radiation in November is around 30-100W.
Feature request: It would be great to see the power boosters state in the Tempest app. For example charging / not charging / error.
Tempest FW version 172
Hub FW version 177
I couldnt find a similiar request thats why opened a new thread.
I agree! I just installed the power booster, and have no idea if it is working or not. In 24 hours, there is no change in the charge state of the battery, as displayed in the app.
Same for me… the battery is still stuck around 2.12V.
I measured the 4 pins and there is power on them so the powerbooster itself seems to work.
Update:
I just read the powerbooster requires an updated firmware and my device is still at the lower level. Should be updated automatically but wonder if that’s possible with little power.
Chicken and egg…
What firmware version does your Tempest have? If it is at least v165, it should be working fine on batteries. Basically, if the version is lower than this, it will continually draw from the batteries in the PBA rather than charging only after the Tempest batteries drop to around 2.42V.
It may be that your Tempest will have to charge via the solar panels to a point where it can receive a firmware update.
Thanks for the reaction: my device is still at Firmware v156 (hub is at v171)
With the current weather over here in Europe it will take a while before the battery will be sufficiently loaded to get the firmware update: it’s at 2.11v now
I’m afraid I’ll have to be patient.
You may want to contact support. I’ve been told that all Tempests should charge from the PBA regardless of firmware. I was able to manually charge an early field test unit using a bench top power supply. Maybe check the voltage across the two outer pins on the PBA.
Last year mine would discharge to 2.43 and then charge to 2.55. The station would gradually discharge until a few days later it would charge back to 2.55 after it got down to 2.43.
Now, mine charged up to 2.83 and is flat at 2.83 (I assume the booster is maintaining that non stop). Is it normal to have the booster maintain 2.83 and how long will that last without solar? I’m in Michigan where there is little sun this time of year with all the clouds coming off the lakes. I use lithium for low temps.
I’ve been doing some experimenting with some extra Tempest devices I have. My preliminary findings are that the battery charge controller circuit located on the bottom PCB (PrintedCircuitBoard) is the “governor” of how much maximum voltage will be allowed per each Tempest device. Each charge controller I’ve tested has a slightly different tolerance. i.e. some of the devices I have tested. . .only charge up 2.74v. . .either in the sun OR on the Power Boster. One other device charges all the way up to 2.81v. The bottom PCB is also known as WF-BASE02-REVJ but one of my older models has Revision F. . .but it also has Firmware Revision v165 on it. Hard to tell what WF-BASE02 revision of your PCB is without opening it up and looking at it. . .but I would consider your Tempest an earlier model with a “Blue” colored North marker and a “Blue” colored WF logo at the bottom (based on the serial number of ST-00001061). . .bui it appears to be very Robust with FW = v171 and voltage of 2.83v. My Tempests could easily become quite “jealous” of yours!
If I understand you correctly, you have batteries in the PBA. In that case, the charge cycle you first describe is what is supposed to happen.
What you describe now is what is supposed to happen when external power is used for the PBA. If you are not externally powering the PBA now, you Tempest or the PBA is confused about the power source. Maybe power cycling the Tempest and/or the PBA will get it back to working properly. If not, the life of the batteries in the PBA may be much shorter than they otherwise would be.
This doesn’t seem normal for my power booster to take almost 24hrs to add just .25 of a Volt.
I noticed on the smart plug (it’s plugged into, to auto turn on when it reaches power saving on the Tempest) that also provides power monitoring that it trickles on and off from 1W to 0W.
That does seem odd that it takes that long to charge up on external power. I found one point on the station at my church where the booster kicked in and charged from 2.43V to 2.59V in three hours. It started charging at 6 am so I’m sure that wasn’t the solar panels doing it.
Maybe turning the external power off and on confuses the Tempest about whether it is connected to a PBA or maybe the contacts at the base of the Tempest have a bad connection.
I think there is a faulty battery because it takes near enough exactly 24 hrs to reach it’s maximum of 2.73V
I’ve suggested this before of my discounted replacement having a duff battery but been told it’s fine… Well clearly it isn’t.
A battery that can only reach 90% is not what I is expected off a new unit.
I am beginning to think this was known about and the reduction in price reflects the quality of the unit.
An update to my previous thought: It seems to have awoken the unused cells and excited the parts other photons can not touch.
After receiving some sunlight today (rare in the depth of British December) it’s exceeded it’s previous highest Voltage.
I hope future charging will not take a day to charge up from PSM using the PBA!
