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How can I increase the mote's battery lifetime ?

How long is the operanting time with the 2 batteries ?
It seems pretty short since I got an alert after less than a week of operation !!!

How can we have details about the MAC layer in use in the networking stack ?
It could be of interest to work on the protocol stack in order to improve the lifetime ...

How can I control the sampling schedule parameter in order to improve the batteries' duration ?

Answers

  • 9 Comments sorted by Votes Date Added
  • Yeah, I've had mine for about 2 - 3 weeks and had to change the batteries twice. Is this normal??
  • The first set of batteries I used in mine lasted just short of 30 days. I was surprised to see that it was calling home every minute though. It seems to me that if it checked less frequently it would last longer.
  • I would think once an hour to check-in with the server and whenever a rule is triggered.
    45 seconds is way to often. I understand it's calling home every 45 seconds to update the dashboard but it has the flip me upside down to do the instant update of the dashboard if you need to see what its doing.
  • I think it bears more experimentation - I think the rule logic comes into play re: how often it phones home, and thus turns on the radio, which I'm guessing uses the most power.

    FWIW I think it would be pretty trivial to buy another AAA 2-battery carrier and wire it in parallel to up the overall runtime.
  • By mistake I had mine laying with the upside down, then it called home a lot more than other orientations.
  • FWIW, if you are going to wire in a parallel battery case, get a 2xAA case (or even a 4xAA case wired to give 3 V nominal), to get better life.
  • Laura, typically you'll get 10 to 12 days after the 1st low battery warning, the trigger voltage is set far too high. And you'll get better life out of the 2nd set; the original set-up is very power hungry.
  • edited December 2012 Vote Up-1Vote Down
    I've had mine just two days, and just got a low battery warning. I thought these were meant to last longer. Very disappointing!
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