How can I reduce battery consumption on emontx

Submitted by Ian Eagland on Tue, 19/02/2013 - 17:09

I have a number of battery powered temperature sensors. I would like to reduce battery consumption. I see the constant that controls time between reads:-

const int time_between_readings= 20000;

How high can I take the constant and is there a point where increasing it is unlikely to help extend battery life.

Regards

Ian

Re: How can I reduce battery consumption on emontx

Submitted by Robert Wall on Tue, 19/02/2013 - 18:57.

I've no idea about that, but take a look over at JeeLabs. I'm pretty sure I've read quite a bit there about battery-saving techniques, though I can't remember now how applicable they might be. You'll probably need to use a number of different approaches.

Re: How can I reduce battery consumption on emontx

Submitted by StuntMonkeh on Wed, 20/02/2013 - 09:23.

Ian,

You may have to change the 'int' to a 'long' or 'unsigned long' to use some larger figures.

Re: How can I reduce battery consumption on emontx

Submitted by alco on Wed, 20/02/2013 - 13:43.

Hi Ian,

I did a lot for reducing powerusage on my jeeheater project (a datalogger for centralheating system) you can find the sourcecode at: https://github.com/alco28/JeeHeat_monitor

I used two solutions: 1) disable the use of the ADAC reference module when you don't need it:

// Some powersaving stuff here
bitClear(PRR, PRADC);        // power up the ADC
ADCSRA |= bit(ADEN);         // enable the ADC
delay(10);                             // stabilize the voltage

JeeHeat.JH_B=readVcc();   // read-out battery script (see below)
ADCSRA &= ~ bit(ADEN);   // disable the ADC
bitSet(PRR, PRADC);         // power down the ADC

2) Use sleepfunctions for the RFM12B radiomodule. (from jeelabs lib).

Sleepy::loseSomeTime(RETRY_PERIOD * 10);

and I also use and scheduler so I don't loop the whole sketch with the upload part to EmonCMS.

Re: How can I reduce battery consumption on emontx

Submitted by mharizanov on Wed, 20/02/2013 - 14:55.

Here is one more excellent article by Nick Gammon:

http://www.gammon.com.au/forum/?id=11497

Re: How can I reduce battery consumption on emontx

Submitted by Ian Eagland on Thu, 21/02/2013 - 15:01.

Many thanks for all the replies. Very helpful.

Regards

Ian

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