I need to put w Tempest at site that is housed in a metal Connex container. A metal building like this is a Faraday cage. No RF gets in or out except for whatever leaks out on the surface of wiring going in or out. The 1000’ spec for a Tempest communicating with a Hub is for a non-metallic structure like a wood frame building. I think you’d be lucky to get 10’ outside the building.
How about a cylinder shaped hub that locks in between a Tempest and the mounting device (plate or pole mount) with a POE Ethernet connection instead of a WiFi connection to the local LAN. The transceiver talking to the Tempest in the POE-Hub could be micro-watts since it’s only inches away. It would work in most applications where a Tempest was located near a building. Outdoor/direct burial CAT5E can run 300’ from a powered switch. It could be the jumping off place for lots of different connectivity options.
A Pro version of the Tempest could have an inductive charging coupler at the bottom of the Tempest housing that could feed supplemental POE power from a matching coupler at the top of the POE-Hub cylinder into the Tempest battery. That would make the Tempest system an option for locations that experienced long periods of bad weather, long day-night cycles or shaded areas where solar power was problematic. Application specific solutions such as larger battery solar panel systems or Thermo-Electric Generators could be employed on a case by case basis. If the charge coupling system didn’t impact the price point too much, you could make all newer Tempest units have the charge coupler rings. That would make sense from a manufacturing and stocking standpoint and make Pro market sales more attractive.
In the remote site market, the POE-Hub combined with a hardened electronics/power case with a SpaceX transceiver (or other commercial or governmental SatCom system) would get you data from sites too far from civilization for cellular. The Tempest could still be 300’ from the case with the bigger solar panels and the communications gear. The POE-Hub could be used with longer range WiFi or microwave gear like Ubiquiti AirFiber point to point links. That would have a lower operating cost for the system owners then cellular or satellite. Once you have a POE-Hub, everything needed to build an extended remote system to meet any specific need is pretty much assembling off the shelf items.
The non-proprietary nature of IEEE 803.3 POE along with WeatherFlow’s published UDP API would also make the Tempest with a POE-Hub an attractive sensor suite for 3rd party system instigators.
- Bill