My SKY1 got accidentally unplugged from the solar panel and ran until the battery drained. When I got the low battery alert from Device Monitor, I plugged it back in and it started charging. But then I realized how drained it was so I took it inside and put it on the AC to charge the battery back up, which it did overnight.
But now it’s still offline. I can see it’s on the network, and if I trace the traffic every 7 minutes it seems to upload an image. It only responds to pings when it’s uploading. But the Bloomsky app continues to reports it offline.
I’ve not yet tried a network reset (since it is responding on the network), but that might be my next step. It’s been inside for a week now.
Bloomsky support is non-responsive. Getting the SKY for free was a great deal. Buying the Storm was the worst deal, since that seemed to break in 2 years (the wind gauge was junk).
What’s a recommendation for a reliable connected weather station? I’ll miss the pictures of the sky (which was a great feature), but it does seem Bloomsky is a goner.
I never heard from Bloomsky support (via email, salesforce, or facebook) - and their phone is disconnected. I suspect they are gone.
They moved all their support documents to salesforce, but they are all truncated and thus useless. E.g., Support Center
I had tried a network reset but it never worked. I left it plugged in noting that every 7 minutes it would go live on the network. But it never came back online.
Tonight I finally gave up on it, and as I was unplugging it I decided to try another network reset. This time the app declared success and it uploaded an image. It’s not yet reported a temperature, but I’ll give it a little while to see if it does.
I’m still in the market for a new weather station. I won’t be surprised when the Bloomsky servers disappear.
AcuRite Atlas or Ambient Weather WS-2000. I have several different weather stations and those are the better ones. I lean towards the Ambient Weather WS-2000 as its display is worth the extra money and it has extra options.
I do like the Ambient Weather WS-2000 (I looked at it when the Bloomsky first flaked out), but it doesn’t look like there’s an option to have it solar powered. That was one of the nice things about Bloomsky: I could set it far out in the yard and it just worked (until it flaked out – but it lasted 5 years).
It looks like you mean the Acurite Atlas, correct?
I have the acurite iris (basic) and the newest acurite atlas. also the ambient weather ws-2902c (basic - bad display) and the ws-2000 with a couple of excellent displays (well worth the extra money).
the acurite iris is WAY outback with a repeater in between.
the repeater for the acurite iris is not compatible with the acurite atlas.
I changed the batteries 1 time in 5 years. they are all solar/battery operated.
the ambient weather ws-2902c has a weird cheap display that isnt clear even if you are standing in front of it trying to view at the perfect angle. the good thing is that the sensor array is the same for the ws-2902c and ws-2000.
I changed collectAll to collectNested and that worked BUT I also had to install the devicehandler from tslagle13’s github repo to get everything to work.
Thanks for answering all my questions! I ordered one.
I’ll miss the Bloomsky daily time lapse. But I’ve taken in the SKY and STORM for good, and unplugged the STORM’s dongle from my network. Both are now in the “to be recycled” box. (the STORM wasn’t working well anyway; the anemometer was broken).
I’m almost certain there is nothing wrong with my SKY - I think the problem with it not updating was with their server’s seeing it come back online. The last half dozen times I reset the network connection it uploaded a single image, and then fell silent again. I think if they had any employees still to tickle their database it might still be functioning.
Don’t let your Sky go offline - it may never come back.
Running it for 1.5 or 2 years, harsh weather range from -20 Celsius to +40 Celsius during that time. I have installed it and it is still running on the initial batteries. 2 pieces of Varta AA professional lithium non-rechargable batteries (as I remember AA, but it can be it needs AAA, I order those together and one for the outside unit the other for the inside display Wifi unit).
I set it up together with a WeeWX installation on a RaspberryPi Zero W and it stores the data locally as well.
