Battery life with AvidDirector

[Alan Shapiro]

We have an AVIDDirector-M2M installed in a truck, and connected
through a cigarette lighter plug. The battery seems to drain over a
weekend. Is this normal? Is anyone else having this problem? Should it
be wired differently?

Thanks,
Alan Shapiro
Programmer, DQ Technologies

[sethd...@gmail.com]

Hi Alan,

I believe this is pretty much normal behavior. We hooked an
AvidDirector 200 on a one-minute transmit/receive schedule up to an
uninterruptible power supply with a 3.5 amp/hour battery and it ran
the battery down in just under 2 hours.

Seth Hooker
Data-Command.com

[Rod Montrose[AVIDwireless]]

Referring to an earlier message on current usage, the expected current
drain is:

The main AVIDdirector board (no Radio board):
- Normal mode, reading from Flash, Green System & RadioLEDs ON 160ma
- Normal mode, not reading from Flash, Green System & RadioLEDs ON
90ma (no processing) to about 130ma (processing)
- Normal mode, not reading from Flash, All LEDs OFF 80ma
- Sleep mode, (SNAP.sleep), All LEDs OFF 60ma

The GPRS or CDMA radio will take on average an additional 150 to 200ma
of current in receive mode and can have instantaneous spikes of
current up to 600ma to 1.5A in transmit, depending on the radio, its
range from the base stations, antenna matching, etc. The Lassen GPS
adds around 160ma of current draw and the Sony GPS (used in the URBs)
add about 60ma of current drain, though depending on the antenna, this
number may increase 10 to 20ma.

Ideas to reduce power consumption:

- Turn off the Radio board (M2M_IO.setRadioPwrOn(boolean) and radio
when not in use. The radio is probably the largest consumer of power.
If you are in a weak signal area the radio will use more power to
transmit and potentially use power to scan for stronger base station
signals.
- Turn off the LEDs if you don't require them.
- If you aren't using the RS-232 port, turn it off
(M2M_IO.setRS232On(false);)

[Rod Montrose[AVIDwireless]]

We have been doing so additional testing and the current numbers
reported in the previous post were about 20ma higher than actual. This
is because when the USB connector is active an additional 20ma of
current is drawn. Running test standalone, without a USB terminal:

- Normal mode, reading from Flash, Green System and Radio LEDs ON
around 145ma (could peak 160ma).
- Normal mode, processing 75ma to 120 ma.
- Idling (no active processing) 65 ma.
- Imsys in Sleep mode, all LED and RS-232 off 41ma.
- Imsys and PSoC in Sleep mode, all LEDs and RS-232 off 22ma (on a 12
Ahr battery this would support around 22 days).

Note the PSoC Sleep mode is currently being tested but should be
available soon (contact me if you are interested).

We are also experimenting with the PSoC turning the Imsys off. This
would reduce current to 3.8ma. In this case when the Imsys is power on
again it would be a complete reboot on the Imsys. This mode would be
idea for situations where you need to wake up every day or so and
report your location and then go to sleep. Custom PSoC software could
be written to wake up on a transition of one of the TTL input lines.

On Feb 25, 2:38 pm, "Rod Montrose[AVIDwireless]"

<rcmontr...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Referring to an earlier message on current usage, the expected current
> drain is:
>
> The main AVIDdirector board (no Radio board):

> - Normal mode, reading from Flash, Green System & Radio LEDs ON 160ma
> - Normal mode, not reading from Flash, Green System & Radio LEDs ON