I live in Seattle and have recently had my Tempest die every single night, due to this year’s Long Dark. Bought the power booster and was curious if I could make it work with my Unifi PoE system.
I found an existing thread, which I would reply to but it’s closed. The wonderful docs for the Booster actually let me know there are two ways to get PoE power in:
PoE DC splitter, and running the 12V output to the Booster’s barrel plug.
RJ45-to-DC pinout plug, and connecting landscape lighting wire to the pos/neg terminals.
Just thought I would share for those who (like me) don’t have mains power near the station.
Be a little careful with your Unifi setup re: which standard(s) your PoE gear follows. My recollection is there are multiple standards and not all gear works with all injectors. I know that I needed to have a specific type for my AcLite AP that I think my Unifi switch didn’t support. Fortunately the PoE injector came with the AP way back then. I’d have to look into the history there to recall specifically. It’s been a number of years.
When you get it working please followup with precise models of gear you used…
+1 on the Unifi PoE caution above. Some of their PoE switches and AP’s use a proprietary PoE interface that is not compatible with the published 802.3 PoE standards.
My dumb question is why you are using PoE on the outdoor Tempest in the first place, since it does not use ethernet? Seems like a recipe for disaster to have a lightning path from the mast straight to your network switch, when you could put a massive overkill solar panel and battery on the PBA for a hundred bucks or so right now. My remote station’s PBA is hooked up to a 12V/100W solar panel, charge controller, and 35Ah battery in the shade, and has lasted over a year now…
Never heard about PoE incompatibility with Unifi (unless you consciously set a port at 48V which will definitely fry stuff). My main reason for wanting to do this is to avoid putting an outlet in my attic and then pulling the DC brick’s cable through the wall. Plus can do (totally irrelevant) power monitoring when powered via the switch. And for sure I have a surge module for all outdoor stuff, but great point about path for lightning.
The solar is a really interesting possibility I hadn’t considered! Any potential pointers on how one would do it and what materials would be needed?
Because we were on the road when the remote Tempest died and had to make a long detour on our way home, I hit up a Harbor Freight in GA and bought these massive overkill items to power the PBA:
I know that similar items on Amazon can be purchased for half this price, and I probably could have gotten away with a 10Ah battery and 25W solar panel if I had some sun at the base of the Tempest’s mast.
I bought a 20Ah LiFePO4 battery, cheap charge controller, and 100W solar panel from Amazon recently to see if I can power a Hub, Raspberry Pi, cellular router, and VHF radio for APRS broadcasts at that remote off-grid station…
Nice! I appreciate the reply. More projects to dig into… Now I just need to talk myself out of buying a Ubiquiti SunMax as the controller for obvious reasons!
Not to dog pile here… but there are multiple PoE standards, some of them involve different voltages and amperages (PoE, +PoE, Poe++ and more). The older Unifi gear (~over 2 years?) was picky about which protocol was used, requiring matched gear. Now, the gear just figures it out.
The reason this is attractive, is that the Unifi gear is “managed”. Which means you can turn the port power on and off remotely, and use automation to consume the voltage amounts and create actions or other things. I came here thinking the same thing - its much, much easier to project PoE than match a wall wort and make that run 50 feet. The comment about the lighting is a good one, I’ll note that ANY wire which goes through the exterior of a house, needs to have fault protection.
The real issue is - can the PBA directly use the low power mode PoE. If all else fails - you can certainly use a PoE splitter to produce 5v/1amp power, or whatever else the wafer requires for power.
The PBA is not, not, not, not, not ethernet!!! WF-T chose to use an RJ-45 cable between the PBA box and Tempest sensor to carry power because it was commercially available, and wired it for their proprietary use to carry power and low-speed serial battery status data between the two. Do not plug the PBA’s RJ-45 connector directly into an ethernet port!
PoE requires ethernet over the wire to negotiate the power being supplied, and will cut power to the port if the negotiation fails to avoid damaging a non-PoE ethernet device.
In theory, a PoE splitter like this one designed for security camera use will do the PoE negotiations, and can provide 12V/2A DC power on its barrel connector that plugs into the PBA’s 5.5x2.5mm power input barrel connector:
The $13.59 question is if the splitter will enable power to the barrel connector without sensing a network device attached to the ethernet out port? Also, the FAQ in the Amazon listing hints that the power port needs a minimum load of 10mA or it turns off the output, so it may require a small ballast light bulb or something in parallel on the output to keep the power on if the PBA is too power-efficient to draw 10mA continuously.
Note that the TP-Link splitter linked earlier in this thread has several bad reviews for premature device failure, so I personally would not buy one.
Now I just need to talk myself out of buying a Ubiquiti SunMax as the controller for obvious reasons!