Friends of mine run a Disc Golf course and they run night golf in the winter. It's a pain to go around and turn on all the lights at the beginning of the night and then go around and turn them all off. I figured I could set something up using a LoRa Arduino and addressable led setup. My question is this:
If I have the addressable LED's running off a battery pack (3 aa's) and the battery pack is on and I have the lights off, how much electricity will it be using?
Would it last days/weeks/months if I only turned the lights on one night a week?
The question was about "mostly dark" consumption, which is the quiescent current of the WS2812 chip when not driving the LEDs on at all. That's the 1ma, and it's constant.
So, 1 mAh per LED per hour, plus the Arduino's operating current, plus "some number" based on number of LEDs on x time on x intensity when on. That will give an approximation of the consumption over time which can be compared to your 3000mAh.
Then you have to figure out what the remaining storage is when the battery is near-discharge, because a 3000 mAh battery probably doesn't deliver flat out at some number then shut off when empty, but rather degrades ungracefully at the bottom end of the discharge curve - but that info should be available for the battery in question.
C
I don't know what 'Disc Golf' is but I can't imagine LED lightning powered by a few AA batteries providing anything like enough light to do it after dark.