Battery life of lithium battery needed for accelerometer and

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shalinicoutinho
 
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Battery life of lithium battery needed for accelerometer and

Post by shalinicoutinho »

Hi! I am a consultant and I am working on a project right now where I am trying to find out the amount of shocks a package bears when it is being shipped from a business to a customer. For this, I plan to use an accelerometer and a data logger. I looked at your products "ADAFRUIT LIS3DH TRIPLE-AXIS ACCELEROMETER (+-2G/4G/8G/16G)" and "ADAFRUIT FEATHER 32U4 ADALOGGER" for the same. But the lithium battery "Lithium Ion Polymer Battery - 3.7v" is just 500mAh. For my project the shipping time of that container may range from 3-5days, so the accelerometer and data logger will need to be working for the entire duration. I want to know if the battery life will let the accelerometer and data logger survive that long. If not, is there another battery that can do this?

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adafruit_support_bill
 
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Re: Battery life of lithium battery needed for accelerometer

Post by adafruit_support_bill »

The LIS3DH needs 11uA in 'normal' mode and has some low power options as low as 2uA. The Adalogger is going to draw a lot more current than that in normal operation. The exact amount depends on the SD card used. SD card write operations can take 80-100mA during the write.

There are a number of low-power options for the 32U4 processor. One approach is to put the processor into a low-power 'sleep' mode and configure the LIS3DH to generate an interrupt based on some acceleration threshold. That way you would only need to write to the card when there is a significant event.

Optimizing for low-power logging is an exercise in diminishing returns. There are some relatively simple things that will make a big difference. But chasing the last few micro-amps can require a lot of testing and experimentation. There are a few threads on the subject here and on the Arduino forums.

We stock plenty of Lipo cells in sizes up to 6600mAh. That would easily get you through 5 days with minimal optimization.

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shalinicoutinho
 
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Re: Battery life of lithium battery needed for accelerometer

Post by shalinicoutinho »

Thank you. Also, does the above data logger record the data in csv format or something? or do I need to enter in some code?

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adafruit_support_bill
 
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Re: Battery life of lithium battery needed for accelerometer

Post by adafruit_support_bill »

There is some example code for light and temperature logging. You will need to modify it a bit to log the accelerometer data.

Also, the example code does not implement any of the power saving optimizations.

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