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Reply To: Monitoring power consumption

Home Forums Mayfly Data Logger Monitoring power consumption Reply To: Monitoring power consumption

#18200
Shannon Hicks
Moderator

    James, your station seems to be using power at a rate much higher than a usual CTD station.  Our Mayfly v1.1 boards with EnviroDIY sim7080 LTE board and a CTD sensor will see a decrease in the battery voltage overnight of 0.045v during a 12 hour period with absolutely no sunlight, and transmitting the data to the portal every 5 minutes.  Your station seems to use at least 0.15v overnight, so that’s indicates the board is probably not sleeping or has some other thing that is drawing more power than the solar panel can replace the next day.  And if your Mayfly’s clock is wrong, it sounds like the CR1220 coin cell on the board is dead or installed incorrectly.  It should retain the proper time for multiple years, even if the main external lipo drops out due to bad charging.  When a new, charged battery is connected to your Mayfly, is the green LED next to the power switch turned on constantly?  For logger deployments, it should be deactivated by turning off the small DIP switch next to the LED as described in the EnviroDIY monitoring station manual.  And if there’s something incorrect with the Arduino code of the logger, it can prevent the board from going into sleep mode between readings, at that could be the reason for your excessive power usage.  It looks like all of the stations in Spokane are behaving the same way and using more power than normal.