Station Not Sending Data - Radio Interference?

#1

Hey guys, been using my tempest for a while now with no issues. I recently got into amateur radio and installed some radio equipment at my house with an antenna on my roof, close to the tempest. Twice now after transmitting with my radio at 5 watts through the antenna on the roof, my tempest stops sending data to the hub. Once I bring the tempest down and reset it to the hub it works fine.

Could my radio transmissions on VHF and UHF frequencies be screwing up the tempest? It doesn’t happen all the time, just twice so far in about a months time. Thanks!

#2

It is certainly possible. I never had a problem with 50 watt 2 meter transmissions or 100 watt HF affecting any of my Tempest, Air, or Sky units. All were within 50 feet of my antennas.

#3

How close the WF is from your HAM antenna? The WF is in 900 MHz should not be impacted unless the RF coming from your HAM antenna its messing with the WF electronics by self. Is your antenna VSWR ok?

#4

I had a mobile half-wave 2m/70cm antenna sitting on a corner of my workbench, very close to a wall. I can repeatably pop the GFCI outlet on the other side of that wall by keying up my 10-watt DMR HT connected to that antenna on 70cm. After thinking about the health effects of that RF radiation (and having an electronic box being the only thing firing my ticker), I dialed the HT’s power down to 5 watts and won’t use it again from inside until I have an outdoor antenna.

TL;dr - I think it’s plausible that the Tempest could be whacked by 5 watts if it is within a foot or so of the antenna…

#5

Thanks guys, it’s within a foot of the antenna because they are on the same mast on the roof. I’ll try re-locating and see what happens.

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#6

Ok guys the weather station just randomly started working again and I didn’t do anything. I got an email this morning that the station was online and I checked, and it was working like normal! Weird…

#7

There is a FW that WF is pushing that solved multiple disconnection issues. Maybe you HUB received an update?

#8

That’s possible, the hub has been connected to the internet the whole time. I don’t know how to tell if it got an update or not.

#9

If you had a link to your station in your profile I could look. You can check too by clicking on the “Online” indicator at the bottom of the web interface to your station or check in the app under Settings, Stations, station name, Status.

BTW, the latest FW versions are v160 for the hub and v134 for the Tempest.

#10

I have the same problem when on 2 meters. It will kill my system. Usually if I remain off 2 meters for a while it starts talking back to the hub again. 50 watts 2 meters, separation is about 30 feet but mounted on same tower. Do not have any issues with my other weather systems on the same tower, but the weather flow appears to not like 146.610MHZ

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#11

I have had an RF immunity failure as well. For me, it was a commercial VHF antenna (155 MHz) located a few feet below the Tempest in the attic. It was a high power transmitter, and it knocked the Tempest offline as soon as I did some transmitting, and it hasn’t come back yet. Going to go up to the roof soon and try a reset.

There is a lot of room for improvement in the electronic design in this regard. By the very nature of this product, people are going to install them up high, where transmitting antennas are also located for many customers.

At the very least they need to add a watchdog to the design to automatically reset the boards. Customers should not have to go up to their roof to reset these devices…

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#12

The strange part is, when I had this issue it magically came back online by itself after a few days. Not sure what that’s all about…

#13

Mine has been offline for 6 days. It showed multiple sensor failures and stopped reporting. Will be doing a reset on the device in the next day or two to see if it will come back online. Hopefully I did not fry the board (that can happen with very strong RF and poor EMI design).