Eco Levels

kt4lh
Posts: 272
Joined: Sun Jan 12, 2020 4:27 am

Re: FYI. Battery power saving

Post by kt4lh » Wed Feb 10, 2021 1:00 pm

VK3KYY wrote:
Mon Feb 08, 2021 5:23 am
Values are approximately...

Code: Select all

Level	Wait time(secs)	Current (mA)	Latency (ms)
0         N/A              62              N/A
1         10	           40	           320
2         8	           33	           420
3         6	           27	           600
4         4	           23	           900
Battery fully charged.
No backlight

Wait time is the time since the last signal was received or last key was pressed, before the radio activates power saving
Latency is the average time to detect a signal
Just to make sure I'm reading this right; with sleep off (or before your sleep code), standby was 62mA and the rest are your measured values with the new code at the various levels. So level 2 is nearly half the standby power usage.

Truly terrific work here Roger, we all greatly appreciate it. I have a few old battery usage tracking, but they were all using 5% minimum backlight, but in some usage yesterday the battery seemed to drop quite a bit slower but as far as I could tell 100% functional.

Thank you so much!

G4EML
Posts: 919
Joined: Sat Nov 16, 2019 10:01 am

Re: FYI. Battery power saving

Post by G4EML » Wed Feb 10, 2021 3:55 pm

Yes, Level 0 is no power saving. The receiver is on all the time.

Levels 1 to 4 pulse the receiver on and off with each successive level having a longer off time.

The value in the Latency column indicates the worst case time taken to detect a signal.

Level 4 will save the most power but may miss almost 1 second of the start of a signal. In most cases this will not be important but on a channel with very short transmissions it may be a problem, in which case you may need to select a lower level of power saving.

VK3KYY
Posts: 7478
Joined: Sat Nov 16, 2019 3:25 am
Location: Melbourne, Australia

Re: FYI. Battery power saving

Post by VK3KYY » Wed Feb 10, 2021 7:50 pm

Decline in battery voltage will not be linear

I have one battery with not much capacity, and although it is charged to 100%, it very quickly drops to below 90%.

However it can remain from 60 to 80% for a long time.

Also, I discovered that the current consumption of the radio increases as the voltage is reduced, because the radio uses switch mode regulators for its internal 3.6V rail.

The radio seems to constantly consume around 500mW on Rx with no signal.

OK1TE
Posts: 58
Joined: Tue Sep 29, 2020 7:58 am

Re: Eco Levels

Post by OK1TE » Tue Feb 16, 2021 9:56 pm

BTW, what influence does the Brightness have on the consumption please? I usually set it to 0% as the display is rather useless component for me, but I actually don't know whether it's worth doing that...

VK3KYY
Posts: 7478
Joined: Sat Nov 16, 2019 3:25 am
Location: Melbourne, Australia

Re: Eco Levels

Post by VK3KYY » Tue Feb 16, 2021 11:26 pm

OK1TE wrote:
Tue Feb 16, 2021 9:56 pm
BTW, what influence does the Brightness have on the consumption please? I usually set it to 0% as the display is rather useless component for me, but I actually don't know whether it's worth doing that...
Its your choice about what level you have the backlight.

Backlight takes approximately 15mA at 100%. You can also measure this yourself if you have the necessary test equipment. Its not rocket science.

The 0% backlight current are in this post and also the User Guide.
Please do your own calculations on battery life for the way you want to use the radio.

Post Reply