Measuring Amperage Consumption



  • I had quite a long thread with Robert_hh and others where I was asking how to measure the entire system current. All this in order to find out whether I can do deep sleep and if not how do I select the battery, etc.
    Useful thread for battery consumption, etc.
    My conclusions from this thread where quite grave so far: it is very difficult and maybe even impossible to make any portable/wearable product with FiPy + Pro-Grade GPS....

    However, here I want to share a bit of info of a Non-EE guy - some of you may find it useful... Based on information from the above reference thread and research and bought a USB device that you connect to the USB port of FiPy (Caution: TC66 device I bought is USB Type C on both ends so you need appropriate adapters on both sides). Despite that Robert pointed out that declared accuracy is questionable/hype, I found this device very useful. Besides that is displays all needed info with multiple screens, it also can record the data. You can download the application for PC, Android, or iPhone and connect the device (it has micro USB B port) to the PC and can either see the recorded data or watch it in real time.
    Anyway, I still did not learn all the capabilities but for $26 it is quite a time saver...

    2e26b8b7-93f8-4492-bac5-342332bf8f59-image.png

    3c5aeefa-49a0-40a6-bf86-e36ea09f68a1-image.png

    3cd445df-2e8a-4e27-aa1c-65edeff60190-image.png

    3ceb774c-b452-41b3-915f-7ad1de4ba5ce-image.png

    The measurement of my system that you see is quite bad: 200-300mA even in the idle state (no LTE).
    Even if I scramble to package 7000mAh battery it will last about 24 hours...while my goal is 1 week - 10 days...
    So now the experimentation begins: disable all unnecessary services on FiPy and also figuring out how much my GPS devboard consumes...


Log in to reply
 

Pycom on Twitter