dht11 CR2032 longevity
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@fhenryco said:
CR2032 .... step up regulatorSave your time, the answer is no ;)
You cannot use a step-up converter with a button cell, it will die in days at best.
You need to :- use a sensor that will accept low voltage, for example si7021/sht21 or BME280
- remove voltage regulator and led on the pro mini (and use 8Mhz / 3.3v one)
- update bootloader/fuses so the BOD (which will reset arduino under a minimum voltage) is set lower, typically to 1.8V instead of 2.7V by default. For that you can use another arduino as a programmer, there are many tutorials around
- add a capacitor (100-200µF typically) parallel to the battery to help it during radio transfers
- in your script, go to sleep between consecutive data sending to let the capacitor recharge
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@fhenryco said:
CR2032 .... step up regulatorSave your time, the answer is no ;)
You cannot use a step-up converter with a button cell, it will die in days at best.
You need to :- use a sensor that will accept low voltage, for example si7021/sht21 or BME280
- remove voltage regulator and led on the pro mini (and use 8Mhz / 3.3v one)
- update bootloader/fuses so the BOD (which will reset arduino under a minimum voltage) is set lower, typically to 1.8V instead of 2.7V by default. For that you can use another arduino as a programmer, there are many tutorials around
- add a capacitor (100-200µF typically) parallel to the battery to help it during radio transfers
- in your script, go to sleep between consecutive data sending to let the capacitor recharge
@Nca78
thanks but ...
!! that's much less trivial than i anticipated... OK to use small voltage sensors and to remove Leds but :
Is it really necessary to remove the regulator ? my previous message linked to an analysis according to which even with a regulator like LQ33 (what about LG33 ?) the arduino could last one year on CR2032 if sleeping most of the time ... i really don't mind replacing CR2032 once a year ... -
@Nca78
thanks but ...
!! that's much less trivial than i anticipated... OK to use small voltage sensors and to remove Leds but :
Is it really necessary to remove the regulator ? my previous message linked to an analysis according to which even with a regulator like LQ33 (what about LG33 ?) the arduino could last one year on CR2032 if sleeping most of the time ... i really don't mind replacing CR2032 once a year ... -
@Nca78
thanks but ...
!! that's much less trivial than i anticipated... OK to use small voltage sensors and to remove Leds but :
Is it really necessary to remove the regulator ? my previous message linked to an analysis according to which even with a regulator like LQ33 (what about LG33 ?) the arduino could last one year on CR2032 if sleeping most of the time ... i really don't mind replacing CR2032 once a year ...@fhenryco said:
" Is it really necessary to remove the regulator ? my previous message linked to an analysis according to which even with a regulator like LQ33 (what about LG33 ?) the arduino could last one year on CR2032 ..."
And apparantly according this more complete datasheet for LG33 , which has the same very low GND current as LQ33 for vanishingly small load currents :
http://ww1.microchip.com/downloads/en/devicedoc/mic5219.pdf
it's not really mandatory to remove such regulator to get long live CR2032... no objection around ? -
From the link you gave, 54µA and 200mAh available that's 200 000 / 54 = 3704 hours = 154 days = less than 6months. (the one year claim is with AA batteries...)
And that's not including the wake up time and transmits.Anyway if you keep the regulator, you have to connect the power on Vcc and not RAW, case not measured in the page you link. It should be better but you would still have an unnecessary leak of current just to save the 2 mn it takes to remove the regulator.
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MMM OK, hesitating just because i'm not sure removing this regulator is going to be as easy and safe for board as i would like ...
just to be sure , if i keep the regulator what you say about connecting power directly to Vcc is in case the power is provided by a single CR2032, right ?
About your third other points (BOD modification) : this is necessary in case the voltager that the atmega eventually receives (either through RAW without regulator , or through Vcc) is lower than a regulated 3.3 V, do i understand well ?
about your last point (capacitor and sleep between consecutive transmissions): is this again related to the above harware choices for powering the board ? i mean is it made necessary again by the fact that the atmega is running on a less than 3.3V CR2032 ? just to be sure i understand
thanks again
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MMM OK, hesitating just because i'm not sure removing this regulator is going to be as easy and safe for board as i would like ...
just to be sure , if i keep the regulator what you say about connecting power directly to Vcc is in case the power is provided by a single CR2032, right ?
About your third other points (BOD modification) : this is necessary in case the voltager that the atmega eventually receives (either through RAW without regulator , or through Vcc) is lower than a regulated 3.3 V, do i understand well ?
about your last point (capacitor and sleep between consecutive transmissions): is this again related to the above harware choices for powering the board ? i mean is it made necessary again by the fact that the atmega is running on a less than 3.3V CR2032 ? just to be sure i understand
thanks again
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MMM OK, hesitating just because i'm not sure removing this regulator is going to be as easy and safe for board as i would like ...
just to be sure , if i keep the regulator what you say about connecting power directly to Vcc is in case the power is provided by a single CR2032, right ?
About your third other points (BOD modification) : this is necessary in case the voltager that the atmega eventually receives (either through RAW without regulator , or through Vcc) is lower than a regulated 3.3 V, do i understand well ?
about your last point (capacitor and sleep between consecutive transmissions): is this again related to the above harware choices for powering the board ? i mean is it made necessary again by the fact that the atmega is running on a less than 3.3V CR2032 ? just to be sure i understand
thanks again
@fhenryco said:
MMM OK, hesitating just because i'm not sure removing this regulator is going to be as easy and safe for board as i would like ...
I never had problem to remove it, try it it's easy !
just to be sure , if i keep the regulator what you say about connecting power directly to Vcc is in case the power is provided by a single CR2032, right ?
Yes, in that case voltage will be a bit over 3V with full battery and go down to 2V (but at 2.4V the battery will be neard dead already.About your third other points (BOD modification) : this is necessary in case the voltager that the atmega eventually receives (either through RAW without regulator , or through Vcc) is lower than a regulated 3.3 V, do i understand well ?
Yes, this is in case you are using cell only.about your last point (capacitor and sleep between consecutive transmissions): is this again related to the above harware choices for powering the board ? i mean is it made necessary again by the fact that the atmega is running on a less than 3.3V CR2032 ? just to be sure i understand
No that's necessary because you are using a CR2032. These type of battery has a high internal resistance, that will go higher and higher when the voltage decreases. It means if you draw a lot of current, you will lose power because of this internal resistance. Then it means voltage drops and as it drops internal resistance increases.... etc etc So you need extra capacitor to help the battery by providing a bit of extra current during transmit.
Using 2 cells will not improve that much, you might even not have better battery life life that as the regulator will consume a bit of power, and as your input voltage will be from 6V to 5V it makes a sharp drop in voltage meaning the efficiency of the regulator will be far from it's best.thanks again
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@fhenryco said:
MMM OK, hesitating just because i'm not sure removing this regulator is going to be as easy and safe for board as i would like ...
I never had problem to remove it, try it it's easy !
just to be sure , if i keep the regulator what you say about connecting power directly to Vcc is in case the power is provided by a single CR2032, right ?
Yes, in that case voltage will be a bit over 3V with full battery and go down to 2V (but at 2.4V the battery will be neard dead already.About your third other points (BOD modification) : this is necessary in case the voltager that the atmega eventually receives (either through RAW without regulator , or through Vcc) is lower than a regulated 3.3 V, do i understand well ?
Yes, this is in case you are using cell only.about your last point (capacitor and sleep between consecutive transmissions): is this again related to the above harware choices for powering the board ? i mean is it made necessary again by the fact that the atmega is running on a less than 3.3V CR2032 ? just to be sure i understand
No that's necessary because you are using a CR2032. These type of battery has a high internal resistance, that will go higher and higher when the voltage decreases. It means if you draw a lot of current, you will lose power because of this internal resistance. Then it means voltage drops and as it drops internal resistance increases.... etc etc So you need extra capacitor to help the battery by providing a bit of extra current during transmit.
Using 2 cells will not improve that much, you might even not have better battery life life that as the regulator will consume a bit of power, and as your input voltage will be from 6V to 5V it makes a sharp drop in voltage meaning the efficiency of the regulator will be far from it's best.thanks again
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Last question : what about 3 AA LR6 in series then :
- also has the problem of a large internal resistance ?
- sharp drop of voltage again because voltage ~ 4.5 V still too much greater than 3.3 ==> bad regulator efficiency , right ?
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@fhenryco 2xAA without regulator is what is recommended in https://www.mysensors.org/build/battery
Oh! sorry, i had completely missed this battery section on this site "build" page. All right
There is just something that is not yet completely clear for me for this recommended usage of 2 AA batteries in series.
The boost 3.3 V regulator is presented as a good way to take "all the juice from batteries" for them to last longer, but at the same time, as a regulator it is expected to continuously draw current even during sleeping time ... and in this way reduce lifetime of batteries
so i remain a little bit confused as for the actual usefullness of such step up regulator : is it only usefull in a project where sensors are transmitting very often so that the sleeping current is not the dominant factor reducing battery lifetime ? -
Oh! sorry, i had completely missed this battery section on this site "build" page. All right
There is just something that is not yet completely clear for me for this recommended usage of 2 AA batteries in series.
The boost 3.3 V regulator is presented as a good way to take "all the juice from batteries" for them to last longer, but at the same time, as a regulator it is expected to continuously draw current even during sleeping time ... and in this way reduce lifetime of batteries
so i remain a little bit confused as for the actual usefullness of such step up regulator : is it only usefull in a project where sensors are transmitting very often so that the sleeping current is not the dominant factor reducing battery lifetime ? -
A lot of people don't change the BOD settings on the prominis and so when using only 2 AA or AAA the sensor will stop running when the batteries are around 1.35V which is a lot of waste. In that situation yes you will get better battery life with the booster.
But if you use a sensor that can go below 2V and set your promini to have 1.8V BOD and bootloader to run at 1MHz (so the pro mini can run below 2V) the batteries can go down a bit below 1V and at that level there's not much "juice" left in them. With that configuration you'll get a much better battery life than with a booster, and you will avoid the main disavantage of the booster: the interferences with the radio that sometimes make the sensors unreliable.
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And no, no problems with AA/AAA regarding internal resistance. You can draw a lot of power from them without problem, so you don't need a capacitor for that. Just keep the capacitor for the radio.
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Now that i have received pro minis 3.3 i can practice !
following the method in http://www.home-automation-community.com/arduino-low-power-how-to-run-atmega328p-for-a-year-on-coin-cell-battery/
i just tried to cut the trace to the LED with a cutter, ... but the LED remained shining after several deeper and deeper attempts .... so i just removed the LED, but now my mini pro is not responding anymore: dead!so i'm wondering if i have destroyed something else trying to cut this trace , and considering how easy it is rather to just remove the led, i'm wondering why the guy advices to cut the trace which is probably a more dangerous method for the pro mini
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Now that i have received pro minis 3.3 i can practice !
following the method in http://www.home-automation-community.com/arduino-low-power-how-to-run-atmega328p-for-a-year-on-coin-cell-battery/
i just tried to cut the trace to the LED with a cutter, ... but the LED remained shining after several deeper and deeper attempts .... so i just removed the LED, but now my mini pro is not responding anymore: dead!so i'm wondering if i have destroyed something else trying to cut this trace , and considering how easy it is rather to just remove the led, i'm wondering why the guy advices to cut the trace which is probably a more dangerous method for the pro mini
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Now that i have received pro minis 3.3 i can practice !
following the method in http://www.home-automation-community.com/arduino-low-power-how-to-run-atmega328p-for-a-year-on-coin-cell-battery/
i just tried to cut the trace to the LED with a cutter, ... but the LED remained shining after several deeper and deeper attempts .... so i just removed the LED, but now my mini pro is not responding anymore: dead!so i'm wondering if i have destroyed something else trying to cut this trace , and considering how easy it is rather to just remove the led, i'm wondering why the guy advices to cut the trace which is probably a more dangerous method for the pro mini
@fhenryco I agree with you, I find it more simple to just remove the led. Cutting trace can lead to mistake (like you did on your first board) and there are a bunch of different promini clones, some might have traces using different paths than on the example.
