Collect information on sd card

hello

i want to collect information over a hall effect sensor on a sd card, not connected tp the computer.

I first connect the sd card, sensor and a 9V battery on my arduino card and connect the whole on the computer to run a script. Then i disconnect the card and the computer for the experiment, hoping mesures will be collected on my sd card. However when i opened the documents on my sd card the mesure's file is empty.

Does the sd card only work when connected to the computer?

1 Like

No, but if you insist on using a 9v battery, you may find that the only time Arduino works is when it is connected to your PC.

Make sure things are working properly when still connected to PC, then get a proper power supply.

Although it may be a battery problem it is likely something in the code.
Attach the code so it is easier to help you without playing guessing games. :wink:

SD cards we use are formatted as DOS Drives with a DOS File Allocation Table (DOSFAT) to say where on the physical drive each segment of a file is written. That info is kept in RAM to speed file operations since before MS/PCDOS.

You have to close the file to update the FAT on the drive. How often you do that is up to you, it takes time to close and reopen a file to append data.

The 9V battery is a low current supply. Worse, a 5V regulator throws away all of the power of the extra 4V.. almost half of low. The same 9V battery driving a DC Buck Converter (cheap board for < 3A) and getting 95+% efficiency.
With a Buck Converter you can drop 6 or 12V to 5V as efficiently but take care not to draw the rated max; at half-load the device lasts much longer! 100 mA of 12V makes more than 200 mA of 5V -available-. So what power do the sensors need?

If you don't need full speed Arduino, running on a slower clock and lower VCC is possible with some boards and DIY-duinos. 3.3V Arduinos can wire directly to SD without voltage leveling and run at 8MHz, still very fast.

1 Like

Can i use a phone’s external battery ?

A buck converter will take any source. If you put a bunch of 9V batteries in parallel it would be 9V with many times the current of 1.
The converter wastes less power than a regulator is all.

This topic was automatically closed 180 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.