Sky battery life

We all need to go green and stop using pink, except where a panther is involved.

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My SKY just quit reporting yesterday. As of the last reading it said the batteries were in good condition (It has only been up since the fall). I have tried resetting the unit inside, but no change. I am not able to safely get up on the roof at the present time to check anything else out with the unit itself. Could it maybe have to do with the extreme cold temperatures we have been having? Below 0F for a week straight. Temps down to -35F, etc.

I moved your topic , please read here and also try the search option ā€¦ it works, really :wink:

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Thanks, Eric. I looked manually, but didnā€™t notice the search icon in the top right! ha

To add on, mine never recovered from reporting low winds as the temperatures recovered. 10F today and I am receiving no data whatsoever from the SKY.

What is your station ID?

I believe it is 6525. That is the number at the end of the serial number.

Your station ID is 1598.

The Sky died because the cells died. The last reading was 2.22 vdc.
Capture

I figured that might be the issue, but the battery indicator still said ā€œgoodā€ when it was at 2.22 volts. So something seems to be off with the battery card if thatā€™s the case. Thanks for looking into it.

The replace value on the Sky is 2.1 so it is working correctly. We have discovered that the very cold is causing the cells to fail quicker once they fall below 2.7 vdc.

Same happened to me too. Sky suddenly stopped working as batteries are empty now. New ones are ordered, but it should have warn it a bit earlier and itā€™s not fun to replace them in winter.

Screenshot_2019-02-19%20My%20Smart%20Weather%20Station

https://smartweather.weatherflow.com/share/4181/grid

@cmottice and @egontinno : I moved your messages to this thread, which is all about battery life and why itā€™s so hard to warn you when to change them. See Sky battery life and lots of other info in this thread regarding the ultimate lithiums in your SKY.

You may also be interested in the discussion over here about Solar power for SKY

I only noticed today but if you check the web portal ( screenshot of mine) you will see the "replace " notification at the bottom of the battery card for my SKY ( currently using eneloops). The app will be updated in the next incarnation to reset the warning to 2.7VDC, so for most situations that should be ok. sky_battery_card_20feb19

Is there any reason the Sky base (below the wind channel) cannot be wrapped in ā€œdark materialā€ in winter to keep the batteries warm? I am thinking of black pipe insulation around the base of my Sky for solar warming of the batteries during the cold months in Minnesota (Nov - May).

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Thatā€™s an interesting idea. But might that overheat the batteries in summer?

Only in the winterā€¦ I would remove (lower) the wrap when (if, 11 below forecast for this weekend) it gets warm. Otherwise, there is really no reason I could no try, It might even help keep snow and ice off the Sky (warm air rises).

Interesting I get a ā€œeditor badgeā€ for being totally incoherentā€¦

Itā€™s an intriguing idea.

Rather than start another sky battery life topic, I thought Iā€™d hijack this one before the thread got too cold.
The batteries in my Sky just died a couple days ago after 263 days. I was looking at the discharge profile over the 8 months and was wondering if the point in November where the voltage dropped suddenly from 3.3v to 3.1 might be a sign of a battery dropping out. Because the Sky kept going for another 3+ months after that drop.

BatteryHistory

Check the voltage of each cell. Iā€™m betting one of them is dead and most likely died on that date.

OK Iā€™ll take your bet, and Iā€™ll bet there is more than one deadā€¦unless you can travel back in time and test them when the drop occurred :wink:
Unless the issue is a bad connection. Lots of the battery issues that occur I suspect is due to bad connections. I believe there needs to be more spring tension to ensure that all four pairs of cells maintain a solid electrical connection. Even yesterday I had reason to lower my pole and move my Sky and I noticed that it affected my battery voltage, but I never opened the battery door.
(I use energiser alkaline batteries because they are cheap and stay above 0deg C)


So another bet might be that a pair of cells lost its connection and caused the dip, in which case there might be 2 cells with higher voltage than the other 6 cells?
cheers Ian :slight_smile:

You might be on to something there Ian.
My SKY locked up a couple of months after I installed it and I power cycled it as recommended to reconnect. Immediately afterwards I noticed a drop in voltage. SKY apiary gave me an offline message on 17 December , so I replaced the Ultimate Lithiums with some Eneloop whites for a test which performed admirably. Weeks later - before I was to dump the ULs at a recycling/disposal point out of curiosity I used my Nitecore charger/ analyser to test the presumed exhausted cells, I found 6 of 8 still reporting 3.61V and the other 2 at about 3.4V. I actually just rechecked the ā€œgoodā€ 6 cells and they are reporting between 3.61 and 3.63V , to be honest, I see the solar accessory as the solution in most situations.