If you have a PM2.5 you may realized that you need to keep a close eye on the battery charge. The PM2.5 has a solar panel to keep the batteries charged but depending on your PM2.5 location it may not get sufficient charge. Where I have my PM2.5 I seem to only get about 6 weeks of battery power. It is almost like the solar does charge the battery but not as fast as it is being used. I'm sure if I put it in direct sun it would be better, but I'm also trying to prolong the PM2.5 life by not having it in direct sun, so I have it in a covered outdoor patio and it gets indirect sun.
Solution for those with a Meteobridge
If you are supplying data to your Meteobridge with a GW1000 then I have a solution to be alerted exactly when your PM2.5 stops sending data due to power loss (battery depleted)...
What you do is create an alert email notification on the Meteobridge. This alert will notify you if the PM2.5 data is not updated. If you are uploading your data to SQL this is particularly important. Because if your PM2.5 stops sending data then your SQL stops receiving ALL DATA! The SQL upload fails if one sensor is not providing data. It wouldn't be so terrible if you just missed out on PM2.5 data but sadly that isn't he case.
Here is how to craft the email notification in the Meteobridge for outdated PM2.5 data:
First create a one time alarm by selecting the following:
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Then fill in the rest, which checks for no data for 15 minutes::
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Full subject/body line does not fit in the screenshot so here it is:
PM2.5 Stopped Reporting # Check battery charge on PM2.5: {*[air0pm-age]/60*1} mins old \ Uptime: {*[mbsystem-uptime.0:0]/60*1} mins
or if you prefer more details (system time and uptime with days/hours/minutes):
PM2.5 Stopped Reporting # Check battery charge on PM2.5: {*[air0pm-age]/60*1} mins old \ Date: [MMM]-[D] @ [HH]:[mm][APM], Uptime: {*[mbsystem-uptime.0:0]/86400*t}d {*([mbsystem-uptime.0:0]%86400)/3600*t}h {*([mbsystem-uptime.0:0]%3600)/60*1}m
900 refers to the number of seconds since the sensor sent out new data. 900 seconds = 15 minutes. So we are checking if the sensor data is older than 15 minutes to then send out an alert. The reason for setting it to 15 minutes is because it takes about 10 minutes between PM2.5 broadcasts and if we just powered up the GW1000 it could take a while to get the first transmission and we don't want to be alerted every time it reboots. The alert is cleared once the sensor sends out new data as the age of the data would be less than 30 seconds.
* this requires that you have also configured your Meteobridge to properly send out email alerts. You need to configure your outbound email SMTP settings on the Meteobridge. I recommend using a dummy Yahoo email that has had its SMTP account setting changed to allow it to be used to send SMTP outbound messages:
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