Reply To: Monitoring power consumption

Thanks for all your help. I believe that the bigger solar panel with >1A peak current, a 1A charging current to the board (jump SJ15), and a freshly charged battery should remedy the winter issues.

Regarding consumption, I took one unit home, mostly charged a LiPo 3300mAh battery, here is what I found (no external sensor connected, transmitted via cellular every 15 min, 70F ambient temp, in my office with no solar panel connected):
Starting voltage 3.851
12 hours later = 3.760 (.091 volts difference)
+12 hrs = 3.669 (.091 volts difference)
+ 12 hrs = 3.593 (.076 volts difference)
I ran it another couple hours and it seems the voltage drop slows a bit over time like above between hrs 24 and 36.
According to Shannon Hicks, “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.”
So our board is using 2x the power even though it’s only transmitting every 15 minutes and had no external sensor connected. Not sure if a battery that’s lost some of its capacity would cause a faster voltage drop?

James