Setup Bought a Kit

Setup — I Bought a Kit

Start here if your TankSync™ arrived in a box. From opening it to seeing your first water level is about ten minutes, and most of that is waiting for the transmitter to wake up.

You don't need to flash anything, and you don't need to pair anything. Every kit is tested and paired before it ships. The pages under "Build it" in the sidebar are for people assembling their own boards from the open hardware files — you can ignore them.

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What's in the box

• TankSync Receiver Hub — the indoor unit
• TankSync Solar Transmitter — the rooftop unit that sits on your tank lid
• USB-to-DC-jack power cable — USB plug at one end, barrel jack at the other
• Mounting hardware — threaded sensor boss with a hex locking nut, already fitted

The solar panel and battery are pre-installed inside the transmitter. There's nothing to assemble.

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Step 1 — Power the receiver

The receiver is powered through a DC barrel jack. Plug the supplied cable's barrel end into the receiver, and its USB end into any standard 5 V USB adapter rated at 1 A or more — a phone charger or a power bank both work.

It starts on its own. On first boot — before it knows any Wi-Fi network — it creates a temporary Wi-Fi network of its own so you can configure it. That network is only used during setup and disappears once the hub joins your home Wi-Fi.

Put the hub somewhere central rather than tucked behind furniture. It needs to hear the transmitter over LoRa and reach your router over Wi-Fi.

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Step 2 — Connect to the receiver

On a phone, tablet or laptop, open Wi-Fi settings and join:

TankSync-XXXX

XXXX is the last four characters of the hub's MAC address, so it's unique to your unit. It's an open network — there is no password.

Then open any browser and go to:

192.168.4.1

That's the TankSync configuration portal. You don't need internet access for this step — your phone is talking directly to the hub.

Phone says "no internet, stay connected?" Say yes. Android and iOS both nag when a network has no internet route. The hub genuinely has no internet yet — that's the entire point of this step.

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Step 3 — Connect the receiver to your home Wi-Fi

1. In the portal, open the Network menu.
2. Tap Scan to list nearby networks.
3. Pick your home Wi-Fi and enter the password.
4. Press Save.

The receiver restarts and joins your network. When it comes back, its display shows the IP address your router gave it — something like 192.168.1.145.

Type that address into a browser on any device on the same Wi-Fi and you get the full TankSync dashboard. Worth bookmarking.

2.4 GHz only. The hub's radio is 2.4 GHz. If your router publishes 2.4 and 5 GHz under the same name, that's usually fine, but a 5 GHz-only network won't appear in the scan.

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Step 4 — "Tank Empty" is normal at this point

The display will most likely read Tank Empty, and the dashboard will show no data.

Nothing is wrong. The hub is simply waiting for the transmitter to send its first measurement, and the transmitter only wakes up periodically. There's nothing to configure to make this happen.

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Step 5 — Wake the transmitter

Your transmitter arrives configured and already paired to your receiver. There are no buttons to press.

Put it in direct sunlight. The internal battery starts charging, and once it has enough power the transmitter wakes on its own, measures the water level, and sends the first reading.

If you're testing indoors on a bench, a few minutes in direct sun through a window is usually enough to get the first transmission out.

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Step 6 — Confirm it's working

Once that first packet lands, the dashboard updates on its own. You should see:

• Current water level
• Tank percentage
• Battery level
• Signal strength
• Last communication time

If all six are populated, the system is working and you're ready to install it properly.

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What to do next

Next step	Page
Mount the transmitter on the tank lid	Install the Transmitter
Tell it your tank's real size and shape	Tank Calibration
Monitor from anywhere on your phone	Connect to Cloud
Tune the display, LED ring and buzzer	Local Web UI

Calibration is the one that matters most. Until you set your real tank dimensions, the percentage shown is based on defaults and won't reflect your tank.

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Recommended settings

Reporting interval: 300 seconds (one update every five minutes). This is the default and it's the right balance for almost everyone — frequent enough to be useful, gentle enough on the battery.

You can drop it to 60 seconds if you want faster updates, but shorter intervals cost power and will shorten runtime during long cloudy spells. See Power Saving for the runtime numbers at each interval.

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Battery and power

The transmitter runs on a genuine DMEGC 2600 mAh lithium cell, chosen for cycle life and behaviour in solar applications. Combined with the deep-sleep design, it keeps running for several days with no sun at all — which is what monsoon and long overcast stretches actually demand.

The only maintenance it needs: keep the solar panel clean. Dust on the panel is the single most common cause of a transmitter slowly losing charge.