Sky battery life

Just wondering if a fault in my Sky as the batteries (genuine Energizer lithium)
only seem to last 3 months, and they look as if they are about to go again.

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I had to replace my SKY batteries yesterday also, they held voltage really well for several months but as others have mentioned , when they go , they go very quickly. I had purchased a set of eneloop AA’s as a backup so they are in and reporting 2.65V and steady, It is summer here so no low temperatures and eneloops are pretty good over a wide range, I am hopeful that by wintertime here that WF will have finalised a solar option and will go with that for sure. I was actually grilling outside at the time and got the App alert to warn my SKY was offline, and another interesting observations was that in the Meteobridge LIve Data tab, next to the SKY readings was a low battery symbol to confirm. I was very happy to see the painless process when batteries were replaced, the SKY immediately reconnected to the HUB and seconds later the App informed me that SKY was back online, all good :slight_smile:

My apologies if this hijacks your thread but I have another problem regarding batteries, which I don’t understand. At the moment, my SKY states I have 2.85 V and my AIR, 2.78 V. What does this mean? SKY has 8×1.5 V nominal and AIR has 4×1.5 V nominal. Why don’t I see battery voltages of nominally 12 or 6 V respectively? Or am I being stupid?

Both devices need to run on ~3.3 volts. Notice that the batteries are stacked two high (~3.3 volts in series) in the Sky, with all terminals facing the same direction. Each ~3.3 volt stack is in parallel, to provide current and battery life…

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Speaking of battery life, my Production Sky’s Energizer Ultimate Lithiums died overnight, after exactly 7 months to the minute since they were installed. They went so fast that I didn’t even receive an alarm!

Funny thing is that I was just thinking yesterday about swapping this unit for the flaky one on my mast, and figured that I didn’t need to put in new batteries because it had a few months left on the current ones. Unfortunately, I’m leaving for a trip in a few ours, and will not have time to get new bunny batteries before I leave. Guess the flaky unit on the mast is staying online for a little while longer… :cry:

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Hopefully the big voltage drop was due to low tempertaure,
but it was behaving how the last batteries died, really quickly,
new batteries bought and on stand by,just in case

my first set of batteries 3 months, and overnight went from 3.2v to 0

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yes mine has died as well * Uptime193d 9h 38m 7s where as Air * Uptime193d 12h 19m 37s is still saying ok?

Mine did not go quite as fast but dropped surprisingly quickly as shown here,but as long as there is the solar option coming, not concerned really, as this would be ideal especially to put on a bigger mast.Will be interesting to see how the eneloops hold up for an experiment anyway. We pay like $20 AUD for a 4 pack of AA Ultimate Lithiums so 8 x AA eneloop rechargeables for 40 bucks is a reasonable option. 2018-12-19%20(1)

Something’s wrong here, Steve. Please contact support@weatherflow.com - we may need to ship you a new SKY.

The “cliff” between good and bad voltage is so steep with the ultimate lithiums that it’s hard to tell when they’re getting close to it (when to send the alarm)!

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Thanks David,
I’ll monitor it for a bit, as 2nd set of batteries seem to have gone back to 3.3v from 3.19v
and it’s coming on 3 months since I fitted them, and they did look as if about to go the other night,
if they go bad soon too I’ll contact customer support.

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My Sky batteries lasted about six months. Went below 3 volts Dec 25th and recently below 2 volts. Batteries are everready ultimate lithium.
Is this what I should expect? If not, what can I do? Haven’t been able to replace yet as Sky is on a pole mounted on roof.

No. They should have lasted twice that. When you do bring it down to replace the cells, measure the voltage of each. Chances are one or more are dead.

That’s a good idea. I’ll check them. If one is low, I’ll know it was just a bad battery Thanks

I have had my unit for just over a month now, I am on my second set of batteries. Second set just died yesterday with no warning. Have had to climb the 50 foot tower twice. In winter it sucks to cold to be climbing a tower

Please contact support@weatherflow.com as a set should live a year or longer depending on sampling rate choosen
Your unit seems to have some problem, 15 days seems way to low.

I agree on battery life,This weekend I am going to get fresh batteries again and climb the tower and replace them. If you are able to you can look at the data ID#5840 The last time I climbed the tower the batteries looked like there was some ice on them. The sky sensor(Wind dir, speed, rain) looked like it was not sealed where it is joined to the battery housing. There is a line where it looks like the 2 pieces join at one point it looks like tit was no sealed. I see it telling me battery voltage is 2.79V but I also see wind sensor failed. I remember when I changed the batteries the last time I opened the battery compartment and closed it and all started working again. I changed the batteries just in case the old ones were weak.
feel free to look at my data, Yesterday everything was working great then just dies around 5:10 PM no warning just no readings. We did have snow and rain overnight and into early morning. The last time I changed the batteries it was just after a rain. Will have to see to see if the same thing happens again after a rain.

when you open the battery door, see if there is some water in there, frozen or not. Some units had a bad joining near the light sensor and water could slowly but surely creep in.

@dsj David, can someone have a look at the data from his Sky please. There is maybe some more going on then just bad luck.

Thank you , Please let me know if you find anything.
I am at work at this point and it will be dark when I get home. I plan on changing the batteries tomorrow RSSI signal looks good.
I have tried to reset the hub when this happens. The Air unit has been working fine. Same batteries from day 1 Air has about the same RSSI and Bat vol 3.09 The sky does say it is online last observation Jan 4 11:58:31 AM but no data on software just dashes. Does this make sense?

That’s not necessarily true. One or more of your batteries may have “fallen off the cliff” while the others are still simply “near the cliff” - very low but not quite dead.

Your extremely short battery life is definitely not normal. There are three likely causes:

  1. bad batteries (you’ve gone through at least two sets so this seems unlikely)
  2. improper battery alignment (see http://got.wf/swsbatteries)
  3. a hardware fault in the SKY itself (given your “wind sensor failed” error this seems likely)

Please contact support@weatherflow.com or http://got.wf/contact and they’ll help you troubleshoot more and can ship you a new SKY unit if necessary.

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