How to Set Up Remote Weather Station - WeatherFlow Tempest

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In this video we cover our off-grid weather station set up including the many challenges it involves. We also compare the wind forecast to our weather station readings 40+ days, and what happened to our WeatherFlow Tempest after Hurricane Fiona hit.

[@gBayCanada]

You deserve more credit than you get for all the great work that you do. Congrats and well done!

[@OurKiteLife]

Thanks Mike :)

[@supericeman2222]

Great vid guys. Very informative for those of us without a technical background. Thank you for investing your time energy and money for others to enjoy as well. The solar panel sounds like a great idea. A mini wind turbine would over charge the unit for sure🤣. I hope you guys are still getting the odd session in! Winter well my friends👍🙏

[@OurKiteLife]

Thanks! We are still kiting, but it's definitely time for the winter wetsuits

[@shaa197]

Greetings! I have been watching your channel for a long time. Great job done. Five points! Very informative and most importantly very useful information and experience. Thank you.

[@OurKiteLife]

Glad you enjoyed it :)

[@Raj-yy7xx]

Nickel Iron batteries or Sodium Ion batteries are both incredibly robust tough climate, battery choices, albeit quite bulky. But if placed on the ground in a weatherproof box with solar panel and PWM controller, it should work at 12v with car USB abapters to convert to 5v USB. Alternatively or augment it with a micro wind generator.

[@edmlemay]

Exactly as you mentioned at the end of your video, our Tempest weather station doesn't work during New Brunswick winter, we don't take it down, it stop working in December and start by itself in April. We replaced the solar/battery section a few times, same. We have been with tempest stations since Dorian broke our old style station. survived Fiona!

[@OurKiteLife]

yep. I believe tempest solar panels stop charging the unit when it goes below zero. The battery has enough juice to stay live for 14 days, so if it get's above zero It will recharge.

[@christophergrissmann8948]

nice video, a smal PV-Panel will work well. We did it already with a 100W Panel and a small Battery incl. a suitable charge-controller.

[@OurKiteLife]

That's great - thanks for sharing!

[@JamesLamb]

I don't see Toronto in the background?! "hid it in the bushes" ha! Glad not too many yahoos, and you found everything after the hurricane! I FINALLY found an online source for our (calculated) tides at locations besides the primary official stations (for example: tide times at inland bridges over a tidal river) - Willy Weather !

[@OurKiteLife]

We're living in PEI now, so no more cityscape in the background. We were glad to find everything after the hurricane too. Will check out Willy Weather - haven't heard of it before!

[@jhgrc]

I've a different opinion how to build such thing. I'd use ultra low power Arduino/nodeMCU with Sigfox-network (Sigfox Canada) which is IOT network, very low xmit-power and for low amount of IOT messages. That would take down power requirement and your powerbank would last for a year (just saying not calculating). And with simple solar cell with occasional sunlight could keep battery charged for longer periods. Then you are measuring wind - meaning there is wind power available. For Arduino powered sigfox device the wind turbine generator does not need to be big, like very small Savonius wind turbine of 1 watt or under. But naturally hurricane level winds would be a problem for the wind turbine. I even imagined as you are not interested generally in 0-3m/s winds where wind turbines do not produce power but on kiteable higher winds, I am also thinking of wind turbine based measurement of wind, how much power does it produce. With that artificial load you could keep measuring station above freezing on winter colds. This idea is for snowkiting on mountain location for mobile wind meter. Naturally this suggestion is DIY service and you use some weather service. So maybe with a almost free cloud computer you could receive sigfox and send it to wind network. Also data plans, sigfox is not for that amount of data you presented. But you really need to send 10-min average wind and 10-min peak so two figures every 10 minutes, for that sigfox is built.

[@mikerogers2319]

Hey - another great video. I saw your weather station when I passed by in August and I was curious to know how you were powering it and getting internet service... now we know! So sorry to see all the damage from fiona. My heart goes out to the people that live there! BTW why not use a small windmill for power?

[@OurKiteLife]

Thanks! The small windmill suggestion has come up a few times in the comments - we'll look into it :)

[@mikemiller774]

Not related to this video comment: When can we expect a video about Flysurfer Hybrid kite? :)

[@crocodile172]

Great video! You forgot to mention that majority of the tempest sensors installed not in proper places for accurate wind measurements. I think it also drastically affect accuracy of the wind forecasting.

[@OurKiteLife]

that is true, but they account for that, as its pretty easy for algorithm to spot which wind sensor is shadowed and which one isn't.

[@Tom-bl9xm]

Ours survived Hurricane Ian but lost internet. It would of been interesting to see how much the gust was.

[@OurKiteLife]

During the storm we kept checking until the station went down - wish it had survived to see just how strong the wind/gusts were.

[@stokakrishna]

Hi. Long time no see!

[@jeddietrich3472]

What type of pipe or tubing did you use to mount your Tempest? How is it living on the East coast? Do you guys miss this city? Love your posts and info. Jed

[@OurKiteLife]

Hey Jed, we used a flag pole to mount the Tempest. Living on the east coast is great :) we don’t miss the city but we do miss friends and family there!

[@polyspiel]

Would it work to have a sensor integrated in a wind power setup? It would have sufficient power to run things when there is sufficient wind

[@OurKiteLife]

Thanks for the suggestion :) we'll look into it!

[@justinulrich7864]

Do you use the Nearcast software with your Tempest? If so what do you gain by having it?

[@OurKiteLife]

No, we don’t use Nearcast software

[@mikes_machines]

Have you researched using the Starlink satellite system as your remote internet connection instead of your current mobile hot spot?

[@OurKiteLife]

We did look into Starlink previously for our home, but it's expensive. Since we published this video we've found a less expensive internet option we'll try next season :)

[@TheSmallsAbroad]

Can you review all the solutions to have music while kiting?

[@OurKiteLife]

That’s something we can look into! Thanks for the video suggestion :)

[@jeanpierredussol3558]

Bonjour pourquoi ne pas adapter directement sur la station météo un système qui utiliserait un réseau comme SIGFOX par exemple, données permanentes pas de contraintes à rajouter une batterie

[@feritall]

Damn, Fiona did some serious damage 😮

[@OurKiteLife]

it sure did

[@mikemiller774]

That looks like a system for a lot of maintenance. Why not Windguru station, unless you have a specific reason to run WeatherFlow Tempest?

[@OurKiteLife]

never heard about windguru stations, will have to google it

[@honzaasterba]

I would think you could find some local hardware geek with a 3D printer that would make a custom battery+solar+windgen jig for you that would power that thing indefinitely with little cost I am suprised that a) someone did not steal your stuff b) some local authority did not find your for polluting public space with your junk - which is what would prevent me from putting up such a station at my local kite spot

[@OurKiteLife]

believe it or not local municipalities tend to approve of such projects like that

[@yermak_evg]

Hi. Thank you for this video. I was assembling my weather station using the Davis wind speed and direction sensor. The electronic part was assembled on the arduino and the cellular modem sim 800 (as I later found out not the best choice). I assembled two devices. One was installed on the roof of the house a kilometer from our spot and there were no problems with electricity. The second device was planned to be placed on a spot where there is no electricity. For the second device, they first planned to use a 30-watt solar panel, but then decided that it would be better to use a car battery. According to my calculations, the battery for 40 amperes of watches should have been enough for 1.5 months of operation, if the data is sent once every 5 minutes. Most of the energy is consumed by the modem at the time of sending data to the web server, so you need to carefully select the communication frequency

[@alexc4035]

Wind-powered weather station. If it's not working, there's not enough wind to kite.