I'm trying to run the MH Z19b CO2 sensors interfaced by a PIC microcontroller, powered by 3.6V batteries.
I would like to get the most out of the battery life. So, I have used a transistor and a GPIO pin from PIC to control the power supply to the CO2 sensor programmatically.
Please find below, the pseudo code of the programming logic I had used to take CO2 measurements from the MH Z19b sensor. I would like to know if this logic will provide me valid measurements. I am trying to measure the CO2 concentration once in every 15 minutes.
start_PIC();
while(true) {
MHZ19_power_on();
PIC_sleep(120 seconds);
/** Till 120 seconds, CO2 sensor was giving 400ppm and only after that I started getting realtime values **/
MHZ19_get_CO2_concentration_value();
MHZ19_power_off();
PIC_sleep(900 seconds);
}