Reply To: Monitoring power consumption

Turns out, it was the micro sd cards. We had two units with Sandisk Ultra 32gb cards, and two with different cards. One was a Sandisk “industrial” 8gb card, I forget the other one but it w

Turns out, it was the micro sd cards. We had two units with Sandisk Ultra 32gb cards, and two with different cards. One was a Sandisk “industrial” 8gb card, I forget the other one but it was an older 4gb card. The Sandisk 32gb cards use far more power — there is some info online but I don’t fully understand it. What I know is the Sandisk “industrial” 8gb card uses far less power. All three of our sites that are operating (the fourth got chewed on by a beaver and we just got the sensor cable repaired) are working great (aside from some sensor issues).

This station does have a bigger solar panel and we installed a 6600 mAh battery. There is no voltage drop during non-solar periods: https://monitormywatershed.org/sites/SpokaneR-SpokaneValley/

The stations with smaller solar panels (all provide at least 500mA) and 4400mAh batteries exhibit the same behavior between solar charges, though with slight voltage drops during non-solar periods…but the battery fully recharges every day.

We had a great test week about a month ago where it was either dense fog or snowing, solar was minimal with very little solar charging, and I estimate the batteries probably would have lasted at least several weeks under those conditions.

Here’s the micro sd card:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07BZ5SY18

From my research there is a 32gb Kootion card might be good too but we haven’t tested it yet. I think I calculated that a 4gb card could store 2000 years of our data, so 4gb (tough to find these days) or 8gb is plenty.

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