hello
i need some help on calculating power consumption and how to make my circuit more efficient in terms of power usage.
i*m building a wordclock with a chronodot RTC chip to keep track of the time.
i also use 38x neopixel to light up the individual words.
(se attached picture)
and i was hopeing to run the clock on batteries for atleast a couple of months.
but the clock is useing WAY to much power to be able to do that.
i have done some research and testing today.
the arduino circuit itself uses 35mA
the neopixel*s uses around 420mA when FULLY bright white
and around 366 when they are very weak with just 1 color.
this is under normal operating conditions. with just 5-8 leds on depending on the time.
so i started thinking about dropping the neopixel and just go with normal leds or RGB leds.
so i did some more testing.
1x with 330 ohm resistor = 18mA
rgb led used a total of 53.5 mA when fully on
R=23,4 mA fully on
G=23,4 mA fully on
B=23,4 mA fully on
i could dim the rgb leds down so that the whole circuit uses around 250mA but its still to high.
they use a little less then the neopixel but not much.
Battery pack?
even if i got a 100000 mAH battery which is huge and take lots of space it still only get me around 200hours which is a little more then a week.
and in order to run the clock on batteries i need to get the power consumption to below 100mA
(atleast i think)
any suggestion on how to lower the power consumption?
or do i have to give up on the batteries and go with "wall" electricity,
and just use battery as backup?
some of my calculations could be wrong so don*t trust them 100%(only 80% hehe)
