Tempest Resurrection!

Finally got around to testing my Beta-era Tempest… And yep, the battery was toes-up.

Sooo, about 6-9 months ago, my SOL (SKY solar panel), quit running my SKY…so I swapped it out for some AA batteries (thereby supporting the economy).

Today, I decided to see if I could wire up the SOL to the Tempest…and WooT! It works.





Just desoldered the Tempest battery, and hardwired the SOL to the + side of the battery connector on the PCB…and the SOL - side to the ‘spare’ GND on the PCB.

Turned power switch on…and POOF!

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I had stare at the card-view of the Battery (3.31v). . .for a couple of moments; thought I was dreaming! That’s very impressive to see that kind of voltage on a Tempest (with the aid of the swapped-out batteries). So used to seeing 2.64v ; 2.82v etc. . . 3.31v was very refreshing!

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hope you don’t fry the internals with such a high voltage, it was not designed that way for surre

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Time will tell… this unit had to be Frankenstein 'ed anyway just to get it to work…

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Ah, Dr. Tempest Frankenstein, I presume?

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RuhRoh! @eric may have been right! Last time Temp/RH reported was at 1:35 PM

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i think you should have connected it to the two outermost pins of the 4 pin connector. That can handle up to 5V.

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That’s assuming that the Temp and Humidity were working perfectly before it died last year…

Just might pull it and resolder…
Which is + and which is -?

Here is the pin-outs of the PBA. The numbers correspond to the pin number of the RJ45 connector.

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Thanks @gizmoev , I’ll pull it down and move the power to those pins and see what happens.