Batteries advice

Projects General Guidance
1

Hey all,

I am working on a project which uses the following items:

  • Arduino MKR NB 1500
  • Arduino MKR IMU shield
  • Arduino MKR SD shield
  • Grove GPS Module

Currently i am powering this with an 5V powerbank (12000 mAh) with an usb-cable.

Now i am trying to extend the up-time and looking to power it all with 3.7 V li-ion batteries. This should be possible, since every component can work on 3.3 V.

The largest 3.7 V li-ion battery i can find is 10.000 mAh and I prefer to not put multiple batteries in parellel myself. Does anyone have any ideas?

Thanks in Advance!

2

I have got some new tips for my Surface pen, I got trekking pole tips, my ice axe has tips, and the micro spikes have tips.

Batteries, I use LiPo4's like this

to run my weather station.

1 Like
3

Are you using any low power or "sleep" techniques? Do you need to run continuously?

See

for ideas. Entire parts or all of them can be powered down or off most of te time in some circumstances.

a7

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4

At the moment i am not using any low power or sleep techniques. However, i will implement this later. It doesn't need to run continuously, it only needs to run when acceleration is detected (~8/24 per day), this should be possible to code (just needs to be implemented).

I would like to power the board by 3.7 V batteries instead of my 5V powerbank, because when i tested the board in low-power the powerbank shut off since it was drawing to little current.

After watching some youtube videos, i think i will create my own battery pack by putting several 18650 batteries in parallel.

Thanks for the nice power saving link!

5

All you need to do is implement a “keep alive” strategy.

You can do it with a simple external circuit which periodically makes a brief demand for a relatively large amount of current.

You can do the same thing in software by periodically turning on a connected resistor that does the same, either with an additional microprocessor, dumb, or a spare pin on the one you powering, smarter. This can be something you check and do when you wake up as you will be doing in you low power methods.

google

 power bank keep alive

and

power bank keep alive 555

and look around a bit.

The particular stab of current, its duration and how often might need to be determined for your exact power bank.

HTH

a7

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6

I'm currently running an ESP32 & BME280 sensor from a 3.7V 13400mAh Lithium Ion Battery Pack available from High Capacity Lithium Ion Battery Pack - Pimoroni

Using the ESP32 hibernation mode & only waking up every 150sec, I'm getting around 4 weeks of battery life :slightly_smiling_face:

Although I don't rely on the ESP32 battery charger as this only charges at 500mAh I use an external 2000mAh Lithium-Ion Battery charger board :smirk:

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7

Thanks for this suggestion! Gonna order it right away!

8

I also thought about keeping the power bank alive, but in the long term this is not really an option, because it will always be less efficient compared to batteries which doesn't require such a 'keep alive' strategy.

I appreciate the suggestion!

9

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