While a UPS does stop the display from losing power, it's not really a "solution" to the problem IMHO. Eventually, you're gonna have a power loss while the weather keeps happening around you and you'll lose data.
All Ambient has to do is program the unit to keep a backup file of the last 72 hours of data. Update the file in a rotating fashion such that the oldest data is replaced by the newest when reaching the 72 hour threshold and store it on a high-quality NVRAM which has a projected rewrite lifetime exceeding that of the display console (or store on removable, replaceable micro-SD instead). Upon power-up and synchronizing the time, read in the 72 hour (or longer) backup file and display the last 72 hours (including the length of "No Data" during the power loss), restoring the rainfall totals etc. (which would, of course, be missing the data during the power loss) so your data would be as accurate as possible. Most people would be happy with this and those of us who are most vocal about this problem probably have backup solutions to minimize the power-loss time (generators etc.).
My guess is that it was probably a design requirement when they built the new display console and had it programmed but that the internal NVRAM chip(s) had an unacceptable re-write number that would have killed the unit in too short a time. Making it work like we want would eventually have worn out the NVRAM chip and rendered the console junk at that point.
I think making it optional and eventually ruining a cheap external micro-SD chip would be preferable to ruining the display console's NVRAM. With the lower cost of micro-SD cards these days, they could certainly afford (and so could we) to use up the micro-SD's write cycles and give us a warning or something when it starts to go bad so we could copy the files onto a new one... That way you'd only lose data during a power failure for the short time it takes you to copy the old card's data onto a new one and replace it in the console's micro-SD slot.
In order to get product out the door; and that's a big concern for any company that produces stuff off-shore; you need to ship it sooner rather than later. Getting the software "perfect" would prevent that from happening and likely cause a financial hit that could be dangerous or fatal for a small company. I think I'd get the product on the shelves ASAP whether it was "perfect" or not too. Software updates can be done down the road (as they already have been) and the cash flow can continue in the right direction.
Now we need another software update to "fix" this problem and add the rotating backup data feature. Come-On Ambient - let's get cracking on this, OK?
