[Please eee my later comment for power/status problem.]
Over the past few weeks, my late 2020 Tempest has been reporting temperatures 5-10 degrees Fahrenheit high (even compared with a few other neighborhood Tempests). I’ve never cleaned it but I’ve been meaning to re-mount it since it’s now leaning a few degrees off vertical, so I thought I’d go ahead and try cleaning it as the WF FAQ describes.
FWIW, the solar radiation readings seem plausible. It’s reporting about 10% more radiation than any other nearby Tempest on the station map, but I don’t know quite where those others are, what their shade exposure is. Also, wouldn’t a high solar radiation tend to push my air temp reading down, as WF tries to compensate for solar warming? (Sunny day here, 10am, and my device reports ~650 W/m2; others within a couple miles report between 45 and 580, yet all report air temp 7-10° F lower than mine.)
Is there anything in particular I should look for when cleaning it?
I believe that there’s an algorithm to adjust for solar heating using the sunlight sensors, which should lower and not raise the temperature reading in your case.
it might be worth opening a support ticket once everything is cleaned up and re-mounted, to have them check the back-end cloud servers for an incorrect calibration adjustment in the smart logic…
Thanks, @vreihen . Looks like I might just be in an oddly warm pocket – with the Tempest off the pole, I could see that its readings were pretty consistent even after being moved into full shade (76 W/m2), and that its temp matched that of my Weatherflow Wind Sensor, which also seemed to agree with my year old home smart thermostat.
Now I have a definite problem – I can’t get the Tempest to connect to the hub or even show any status with its LED. I was able to power it on once after cleaning it (and I followed the instructions to the letter, including resisting the temptation to wipe the stained wind gap surfaces), but I turned it off after again seeing how the rinsing had messed with the temperature readings. I left it outside for a couple hours, and now it doesn’t seem to power on, and pressing the Tempest LED button gets no response. The battery was fine this morning, showing 2.68v. So I guess it’s time for a support ticket unless the @tech-gurus have some other ideas.
My recollection is the compensation algorithm is based on wind speed so if it is very calm you’re not going to get any (or minimum) compensation. I know we did lots of testing when the Tempest first came out and found it warms up slowly and cools down slowly when out of direct sunlight.
did you try toggling the switch a few times back and forth ending with on ?
You have an older device with the mechanical switch and sometimes some micro corrosion can build on the switch.
Thanks, Eric. Yes, I tried moving it several times.
I finally got the LED to light up when I tried one last time last night before going to bed, about 10 hours after cleaning it, but it did not pair on its own and I was unable to get through the Replace Device flow – I couldn’t get it to enter the slow green setup mode, just saw some green flashes and one purple. I left it Off overnight and now I once again can’t get any light out of it.
I’ve opened a support ticket, crossing my fingers…
power it on via the switch, let it start and then push/hold the led till it reboots again. It should blink slowly green (this resets the Tempest) , now try again the replace option.
