Reply To: Monitoring power consumption

Hi thanks for responding. I’m sure our system is undersized for our location. Today was a pure sunny day, last week we installed an extension pole and cable so the solar is up plenty high to get direct sun. But today we got no readings sent via cellular.

Our battery is a LiPO 4400mAH 3.7V.

The solar panel is a 1W 6V
Open Circuit Voltage: 7.7V
Peak Voltage: 6.5V
Peak Current: 180mA
Peak Power: 1.2W

Trout Unlimited’s guide says that any reading above 4.0V is a fully charged battery. But this winter we’ve seen the reading above 4 and an hour later no more data. So it doesn’t seem like the battery is truly fully charged because it would last more than an hour.

If anyone has a recommendation on the max solar panel and battery I’d appreciate it. The other option which I think would work is to get a pack that holds 6 or 8 AA energizer lithiums and use that, but we would need to program the mayfly to not draw any juice until reading the meter or transmitting data. And we could maybe set it to send every hour instead of every 15 minutes. I’ve had game cameras sit out all winter and take hundreds of pictures and videos without draining those energizer lithium batteries. I don’t know what a game camera draws while not taking a picture, I know the clock stays accurate.

Thank you!
James