I’ve successfully modded my Tempest v1 and hub for further range. The process involves desoldering the stock 900mhz antenna for a larger dipole typical of 900 Mhz radio control system (crossfire or R9). I first opened up the hub and replaced the antenna with an sma connection wired to the outside of the case. With this I tested a crossfire immortal T antenna and a large Yagi antenna I bought from Amazon. While I did get better range I still could not get the 3.7 miles range I needed. Then I opened up the Tempest Sky (v1) and soldered in a 900 Mhz whisker dipole. The combination of new rx and tx antenna’s got the range I needed. I also tapped into the uart of the hub so that I could monitor the sky packets and rssi as they were received. Sometimes, even though I would receive regular packets from sky to hub, the hub would not update it’s wind graph or indicate that the sky sensor was back online. I guess this is because the signal was too weak for a bi-directional link or just not enough packets were being received for the hub to consider a good connection. Attached are a few of the photos.
I love this kind of mods. What is the range you can get now? (Personally I don’t need a longer range, but I’m still curious)
Yesterday I got a rapid packet from 8.6 miles distance. But I doubt it would be a strong enough link for the base station to actually consider the sky sensor “UP”.
Interesting seeing the internals, but is this just a science project for the heck of it, or do you really need a $300 unit to have such ridiculous range for some real reason ?
Now if you put a wired ethernet port in there or a 5GHz wifi radio, a LOT of folks would be interested in those mods I’d expect…
Would love to get more detailed information on this mod! Specific how to identify where to solder the new antenna and which antenna was used.
I just did another range test and got 11 miles. The antenna to sma plug on the base station is pretty easy. You just solder the pig tail to the circuit board. The antenna mod on the sky sensor involves splicing a section of coax which i’m still pretty impressed with myself that I actually got to work.
I finally opened up the top part and found the TX RX pins. Unfortunately no sensor data is sent out over the serial pins. I can initiate some tests though. I wonder if the guys at WF would let me know how to turn debug mode on.
again - real question here - why are you fiddling with this ? Is it just a fun science project or do you have a use case requiring literally miles of connectivity ?
Yes, the use case is making the tempest a remote weather station at the coast where no infrastructure is around. The closest place for a base station is miles away.
