Tempest weather station with external solar panel is now in service broadcasting data from Smiths Marina, Crownsville Maryland. This valuable weather instrument was saved from the landfill hopefully to spend many more years of providing important weather data.
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Very Nice! Always glad to hear about thought out fixes for issues!
Soā¦it would appear that the solar panelsl on the ST device itself have been disabled in lieu of the larger solar panel or. . .are all of the solar panels working together?
The solar panels are unplugged from the circuit board and rendered inoperable. (I may have mentioned in a previous post) Thanks for asking. BTW the aux solar panel is way more than the unit requires but has a usb connector and is regulated. The buck boost allowed me to adjust the voltage down within the range of the internal battery. I would like to find a smaller solar panel with a usb output. So you come up with something, please post it. If you have any other questions related to this install, please ask away. Thanks
Itās not real until you provide an explicit parts list and how you wired it up so others can do it too !
This is āgreatā news for others in similar low-sun locations. Need more details. Iād like to try to see if something similar can be done for the old Sky if I ever get my old station and broken SPA back from a family member on the other coast.
Hi Vince, If you scroll back to the top of the thread, it has most is not all of the major electronic components are listed and or pictured. Since this does requires some degree of basic technical knowledge to get to and solder on the circuit board of the Tempest instrument I figured if I provided the bits and pieces along with some good pictures, most tech oriented people would take what I had put together by trial and error and apply their creativity to come up with a solution.
Sure. Seeing āmost if not allā and āby trial and error and apply their creativityā is what concerned me a little. We all want to avoid spending some money and then unfortunately releasing the magic smoke 
So digging around upward and online to get straight to the ordering pages rather than battle all the Amazon sponsored links silliness, I come up with the following quick links straight to the pages to get them fromā¦.
Is that really all there is other than making things weather resistant ? Solar to buck converter and solder to the correct pins on the Tempest after disconnecting the Tempest solar panels ?
Or am I missing something in the thread ?
(and waaaay cooooool project !!!)
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Before you start buying this stuff maybe you could tell us what kind of problem you are having? Not that I can help but possibly others can. Also I have a feeling that the internals of the Tempest may have had production changes especially with regards to the physical size of the battery. Take it apart and be sure to take pictures and compare the dimensions with the battery I posted previously. I cannot be sure that the problem i was having was caused by the battery but possibly with the solar charging circuit causing the batter to run down. Once I disconnected the solar cells the new battery held a charge for a few weeks while I had in inside the house. Also, mine did not have any gel inside as others have mentioned. This is just an experiment to satisfy my own curiosity. I gave you the basic building blocks and that it is working.
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I was trying to better complete the picture so folks could find a complete ābuy these parts, do these stepsā to try to bring their gear back to life. These forums are pretty difficult to search especially after time has passed. The forum software is very weak re: searching.
In my case, I was a field tester for Tempest, Air+Sky, and SPA and had āmultipleā failures related to anything solar and battery related in all those devices, other than the Air. Every single device I ever had experienced these issues. Gave up for this and other reasons and sold/gifted all my WF gear 5+ years ago.
The last Air/Sky station that I gifted to someone still has the issues - Sky eats batteries so fast the current owner just stopped feeding the monster and just uses the Air. The SPA (the third one) doesnāt work at all. So I was thinking of trying a science project to bring that station fully back to life for them perhaps.
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I have three tempests from way back when. While shipping them inside my container from west Africa to Asia, the batteries were all more or less destroyed. Iāve been swapping them out as I have time and inclination. I didnāt have access to small amounts so I had to buy 30 batteries from Ali Baba. Iām swinging through Colorado in April, if anyone wants a battery, let me know and Iāll send it for a coffee and shipping.
Iām keen to try some of the other options folks have listed with additional panels. How did you waterproof the assembly? Did you put it in a box? Or just cover with shrink tape?
Swapping out the batteries was my first time soldering on PCB. First I pulled the batteries off their mounts, so there were just two prongs standing, then used solder wick and flux to extract the old solder, then the new ones went in super fast!
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