So, i have a question i have my tempest hub in my living room closer to the outside sensor due to distance and was wondering in the case i loose power is there a small battery pack i can plug into the hub? Also is this something i have on constantly connected to the wall and the hub?
Now i have the At&t router in passthrough mode going into my netgear nighthawk in a different room which i then have the meteobridge connected to it. How can i protect this to with a backup? Or should i worry about just getting a backup for the tempest hub?
The hub can store +/- 8 days of data as long it is powered (reboot = loosing the data). It will backfill once it can talk the the Weatherflow servers again.
that’s the idea, it feeds the hub directly from wall as long there is juice and once wall drops it goes on battery. When wall comes back it feeds direct again and charges its battery back up. Just like a UPS but in mini format. You need just a little "USB charger " to feed the bank (it’s in the description)
Hey Eric, Right but my confusion was whether the powerbank is always on? How do i power the hub with an iphone usb adapter? So one end goes into the hub and other into the wall?
I got the Hub Power Bank (WF-TWSPBM6) back in April of this year. I HIGHLY recommend having one! My house has lost power 6 times since then (NOT due to storms). . .and the Hub Power Bank has come thru each and every time. i.e. as @eric mentioned above. . .all data that should’ve updated in real-time was promptly Back Filled once power was restored and Wi-Fi was reestablished.
Hi Eric, So in the case i loose power during a storm the battery backup will continue collecting data from my outside sensor for 7 days until it runs out then release it to me once wifi and power is restored and connects to the WF servers?
As long the hub and the tempest are powered they will buffer data till they can send it to the WF servers. The Tempest will run … depending how much sun it gets.
The power-bank can +/- power the hub for 7 days (hopefully you never will be out of electricity/internet for so long) Once it can talk back to WF servers it will backfill the data (might take some time to do 7 days but it will).
If the power-bank runs out of energy before you get contact with WF servers and the hub stops working, you loose all data it buffered. Powering down or reboot erase the memory.
Eric, So in the case of lets say a TS or hurricane if i loose power during the height of the storm the hub will collect valuable data that will be saved and uploaded once power is restored if before the 7 days? Wow if true who would not want to have one of these in SFL with daily afternoon storms and hurricane season.
Just so I understand - the Power Bank is just a big USB battery with passthru charging, correct ?
My recollection is WF said they just sell somebody else’s gear with their branding so it doesn’t have any storage for sensor readings etc and all that would be in the Hub already as I recall things.
Or did my hazy recollection on this one fail me ?
While I see some similar looking units on Amazon for less (many unavailable currently), the more famous label Anker gear at the same specs is about the same price, so it doesn’t seem horribly expensive but 50 bucks seems like a lot to me at a first impression…
and the Power-bank doesn’t store anything else except energy, it does not communicate withe the hub or Tempest or any other device. It’s just a power-bank.
Using a battery backup to keep power to your Hub is ideal for Tempest owners living in areas prone to power outages or severe weather. While powered, the Hub will continue to receive weather observations from Tempest devices and can store up to 7 days worth of data from a single Tempest device. Once an internet connection is restored, the Hub will be able to backfill stored weather data.
Tempest has advised me the power bank will allow my tempest and the hub to keep communicating until the powerbank dies during an outage. Data can be viewed over Bluetooth if you are beside the Hub until power is restored.
Not seeing what’s confusing there. The Tempest sends data to the Hub when it can reach the Hub. The Powerbank keeps the Hub running for hours without AC power, so the Tempest will be able to reach the Hub for many hours if the AC goes out.
My recollection is that the Tempest has a (smaller) amount of storage for when it can’t reach the Hub. I seem to recall that’s a day or two, but it’s been so long since this was discussed I might have misremembered.
@eric - isn’t there also a watchdog timer in the Hub that will cause it to reboot (?) or something if it doesn’t talk to Internet in some specified period of time ?
The power bank only provides power to the hub. The Tempest always communicates with the hub if the hub is powered. The hub has a memory buffer which holds the data until it gets confirmation from the WF servers that a particular set of data has been properly received, then the hub clears that part of its memory. If the hub can’t communicate with the WF servers it stores as much data as it can. When its memory is full it dumps the oldest data to make room for the most current data.
The main thing to remember is that the hub uses volatile memory, which means when power is removed all data is erased from the memory.
