Reasonable radio range for a battery powered SenseBender + radio setup?

[stevebus]

Hi all,

What would be a reasonable 'open air' range for a SenseBender Micro board plus associated radio? I've never had good luck with regular Arduino Mini based battery powered devices, but bought the SenseBender and have fallen in love!

I'm getting great battery life now (been running nearly non-stop for a week with NO change in battery voltage), but the radio range is definitely less than a powered sensor. Running on two normal AA batteries. My gateway is out in my poolhouse, and I've been playing with the SB board from my living room, which is about 70-80 feet away. The gateway has the antennae version of the radio and has no problems picking up a powered nano-based sensor in my garage about 120ft away.

The signal from my living room is line of sight, about 70-80 ft, through two glass windows (single pane). Is this a reasonable range for a battery powered setup like mine? Powering the sensor over USB (3V FTDI friend) is no problem. Should I see that much drop-off from battery powering?

One of my ultimate goals is to instrument one of my deer feeders (to know when it's out of corn) via a battery-powered SB Micro based board. it'll be about 80-100 ft from the powered garage sensor, which runs as a repeater. Is that reasonable range for this setup?

thanks,
--Steve

[stevebus]

BTW - meant to mention.. The batteries I'm using measure 3.13V on my multimeter