With other sensors I have setup using solar power/battery and wi-fi, collected data is written to local storage folders first and then another script checks those folders to upload to cloud if wi-fi is available. If wi-fi goes out during storm, etc generally still able to collect data and resume upload once wi-fi connection has been restored.
Not sure if the purple air sensors work or could be made to work in this way, but would allow more sensors with battery or other redundant power sources to continue collecting (and later reporting) data during temporary power/network outages of several days or more.
Thanks for the info. I’m getting at the purple air data collection is either online or offline and maybe a more dynamic option in the future might be ‘temporarily offline’ where data doesn’t go to the trash, but saved to internal storage(buffered) to be uploaded when back online.
I am experiencing the same issue as well. I got the same question regarding the functionality of the sensor when the wifi is off for unknow reason. I am confident the sensor is still working, but I am unsure whether the data collected during the same time will be upload to the platform or stored in a seperate file. This uncertain arises from observing missing data on the purpleair map during the wifi was off. Did you get the reponse? Do you have any idea when I we get the missing data?
Thank you!
When a sensor is unable to upload data via WiFi, it will still continue to log data to the SD card if one is present. However, this data will not be uploaded when the sensor connects to the internet again. It will simply continue reporting 2-minute averages at 2-minute intervals.
The sensor doesn’t upload previous data from the SD card because is no way for us to verify that this data is unaltered.
Could the mechanism by which live data are verified be applied to buffered data(data recorded when power is interrupted)? As it is, historical air quality won’t be recorded during disasters which involve loss of power unless the user of the device supplies their own power bank buffer for such an outage.