Hi guys, I have this project called weather station which components are wind speed, direction, and 4 other sensors. and I am using Solar panel 12v 100w and 3s5p battery pack with 18Ah capacity.
The problem is the battery drains quickly. The wind speed, direction and voltage sensor is directed to the battery which requires 12-24v, I'm using terminal block and PCB for this. Does this have something to do with it being directly connected to battery pack, causing it to drain quickly? if yes, Can I use VIN in Aduino instead? or any?
Could you share a picture/wiring diagram/schematic of the system?
If components are rated to work at the voltage range that the battery supplies, then it shouldn't really matter whether you connect them directly to the battery or through the Arduino. Overall that shouldn't affect battery life by much.
You could if 5V is enough for your sensors. However, you do need to keep in mind the current limit on the Arduino pins if you plan to connect sensors/other components to the Arduino.
How are you powering the Arduino? If you are powering it using the VIN pin connected to the same battery (using the on-board voltage regulator) then that'd be just a more inefficient way of connecting the components directly to the battery.
As all of your sensors should be referenced to the same ground potential anyway, you can use a single GND pin for all of them.
A bare arduino nano pulls 20milliamps at 5v. Lets say you add some sensors and include the voltage regulation and it pulls a way too high 200 milliamps at 5v.
Thats 1 watt per hour, so it should run for 216 hours, not including the solar panel
So either the batterys no good, theres a short circuit, or we havent been told about the massive spotlight attached to it
That should not drain the battery "too quickly". I'd suggest trying a different battery, even a cheap SLA battery - just for a comparison to rule out a bad battery.
the battery drains withing 2-3 days even with sunlight, I'm using 3s5p battery pack with Polycrystalline 12v 100w panel. The interval of sending is 15minutes.
The 100W solar panel should fully charge that 18Ah battery with about 3h of peak sunlight (not very accurate figure since I don't know the exact numbers of your system. Also, I'm not sure if your battery voltage is 12V like mentioned in this post. I assumed the battery voltage with 3s5p pack would be 12.6V).
So, I doubt reducing it to 14.4Ah (3s4p) would help.
Instead try a few things:
Run the system using a lab PSU (connect it instead of the battery) and check the current & power.
If you do not have a lab bench power supply, use a multimeter and connect it between the battery and the solar charge controller to measure the current.
Check the value for under-voltage cut off set on the solar charge controller and make sure it's correct according to your battery type & pack configuration.
I think my strategy to save power would be to set up an Arduino controlled high-side mosfet power switch to run all the sensors off - and just power it on when you are going to take readings. The code would have to allow for sensors just appearing and disappearing, and you would need to have them powered up and operational for long enough to get a stable reading.
If the whole rig is not moving much then only power on the GPS unit every hour or something appropriate.
I think I've found the problem, I removed the NEO-6M GPS Module and now the battery is no longer draining quickly. Until now, there has been no decrease in voltage. Thank you guys, will try another module
GpS modules might take more current than all of your srnsors togerher.
But 18Ah in 3 hours is 6A.
That is 70W and will produce sufficient heat to fry your GPS...
