Post Falls Weather Station
All the weather data, all the time - With no batteries.
I was an original Kickstarter backer for the Tempest weather station eons ago.
I was looking for a 'no moving parts' station after what seems like two decades of Buninyong/Temecula weather station maintenance (Was it the Dick Smith station that Gary had something to do with? Man, it's been a while).
Tipping bucket rain gauge, 360 ° rotating wind direction arrow, and most of all, the spinning anemometer (wind speed). All those have moving parts of various configurations, all of which have given me issues over the years. Not to mention the spider webs gunking up the works and bird poop blocking the rain gauge.
Not only, but also, since I was the guy who 'ran' the Opto22 weather station, a $1200+ Davis Vantage Pro2 job, I know that even if you spend gobs of money, you still have moving parts and they still have issues regardless.
The Tempest has an ultrasonic wind direction and speed, so that is pretty sweet, and uses a really interesting acoustic/haptic method for detecting rainfall. Bottom line, zero moving parts for the same weather data.
For the most part, I've been very happy with it for over 10 years now....
The most part? Yeah, it sort of eats batteries... I mean, not like Gary's station was - batteries per hour, but in my case, batteries (8 AA) every 3-4 months.
Does not sound too bad, but let me tell you, getting the long extension ladder out and climbing on the roof that often gets old.
At some point, I want to say, about 6-7 years ago, I bought their solar panel add-on.
It worked great for about five years and then one day, out of the blue, it suddenly stopped.
I've been back to changing batteries in it for the past few years. Not a huge issue in sunny SoCal, but.....
With the move to Idaho, something had to change.....Aint no way I am getting on the roof of the shop in winter. (And yes, I know, lithium batteries handle the cold better, but I still don't want to take the chance they die mid-winter storm).
My mission then was to hack a no-battery solution together with not a lot of time or care factor.
I'd taken the solar charger apart yonks ago and never really dug into it to find out why it stopped working... Took a super quick look on the 'workbench' in the shop here and found the surface mount regulator had failed.
I'm not in the mood to try and repair that, so I just cut the battery PCB rail, thereby isolating the broken circuitry from the mount.
I then hacked-sawed the solar cell plastic mount off, and so I ended up with a 'spacer' with the correct fitting for the bottom of the station, which, most importantly, had the spring-mounted battery contacts. (No photos 'cause I was in a hurry). Soldered some wires up to that, a dab of hot glue, and we are ready to power the station full time.
Remember, the goal was to eliminate the need to get on the roof to change batteries at any time of the year... So, we now have a 5v DC to 3.3v DC converter feeding a long set of wires up the station on the roof, and we are done. Zero batteries in the data chain. Yay.
Clicking that link should get you right to the weather at the house.... If you want the actual station data, click on the little icon that I have pointed out in the screenshot.