Battery drained in one week (rooms sketch from SVN)

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Battery drained in one week (rooms sketch from SVN)

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mdamen

Using the rooms sketch from SVN my battery has drained within one week. Looking at the cause of this, some questions come to mind:
- What could have caused the battery to drain in such a fast manner? - I tried measuring the current drain using a multi-meter, however I'm a complete electronics newbie so I did not succeed. Any hints? - What's an acceptable time for 3xAA to drain? - Could it be possible that my configuration is different? I don't use a PIR, just the temp/humidity and light sensor. - Does the rooms sketch in SVN has the power optimizations as described on the blog?
Any suggestions and idea's are welcome...

Posted 16/05/2010 20:38:09
jcw

I know of one scenario which will indeed drain the batteries in no time: if there is no central node to send acks, then the rooms nodes will keep on trying and re-trying. I've seen the same happen here - haven't gone back to improve on that, yet. Someone mentioned a rooms node lasting over 4 months, so it's definitely a software thing - the hardware can go into a very low-power state.
I found out that low power can be very tricky (both design and measurement). See the pages for numerous posts on this topic.
No PIR is an advantage - it can be the cause of most wake-ups.
Yes, SVN is the latest code.
One week on 3x AA seems to indicate the node almost never went to sleep, so my hunch is that your central node isn't permanently on?

Posted 16/05/2010 21:11:40
mdamen

I presume you mean any node sending ack's (in my case a jeelink v2). My jeelink is connected to my home automation server, which is on 24/7. So this doesn't seem to be the case. I'll modify the sketch code so that it sends information every 5 minutes rather then 1, to see if it increases battery life. If it doesn't, then I atleast know that the device is sending constantly (or trying/retrying for that matter)...

Posted 16/05/2010 21:53:24
mdamen

I looked into this issue again, optimized/changed the rooms code a bit (thanks Digit) However I never get an ack from my jeelink. I reflashed the RF12Demo to my Jeelink just to make sure I'm at a recent level. What am I missing??

Posted 24/05/2010 00:28:42
mdamen

D'oh.. just found out I was using an old rooms sketch (one from Google code) Didn't know the code had moved. JC, it might be smart to close the Google code repository?

Posted 24/05/2010 00:35:39
jcw

It's unfortunate, but I can't. I closed my Google account. I've since been forced to open another one for "emergency use", but it doesn't give me admin access to the old area.
UPDATE: I've sent an email to Google to try and get admin rights again.

Posted 24/05/2010 10:20:08