Posts made by JayKay

@tbowmo
That is exactly the kind of rough estimate I was looking for and it does confirm my doubts. Thank you very much.

@BartE

That looks like very important basics to get any battery-powered project off the ground, but even in this tutorial they basically just mention sleeping and infrequently polled sensors. My gut feeling tells me this is not going to work.
Too bad

@BartE
Ah interesting, there is a ready-made thing that supplies the Arduino from batteries.

But basically what you said is exactly what my question boils down to: Is it feasible to run something like this on batteries?
What would (just roughly) be my estimated lifetime?

@BartE

The first link is exactly what I would have started to do if I wanted to build just the IR blaster and have it run via a 5V power supply. But since I am wondering if it can be done battery powered it would be nice to get some info on that.

The second link is going to be helpful in figuring out my IR codes, that's great, thanks!

Hi everyone,

I recently stumbled upon the mysensors.org site and now i am hooked and I want to create my own network. For my first project I have the following idea, and it would be nice, if you guys could give me input on whether it is feasible and what the necessary resources would be for me to find information.

I want to build a battery powered wireless IR blaster node.

The reason is this: In my living room I have a "smart" TV and an old AVR and an LED strip all on one wall opposite of my couch.

The smart TV can be controlled via wifi, but only once it is turned on. If it is in standby I can only wake it via the IR remote that comes with it (so stupid).
The old AVR can only be controlled via IR and the LED strip can also be controlled via IR.

Now since the side of the room with the couch doesn't have any shelves or anything I really don't want to have a wire running up the blank wall to some IR blaster that then controls the appliances on the opposite side of the room, so it would be nice to have the IR blaster be battery powered and in a nice unobtrusive, compact, white casing. This would even allow me to stick it to the ceiling.

Now there are tutorials on how to build IR blasters with Arduino, and there are tutorials on how to build a MySensors node and gateway, and there are tutorials on how to use OpenHAB to control this network AND there are tutorials on how to build battery powered nodes, BUT I don't know if it even makes sense to try and build a battery powered node that is not just a sensor that infrequently wakes up, takes a measurement and sends it back to the gateway.

I have a feeling that constantly listening to wireless signals so that the node can react and blast an IR code will drain a battery fast.

Can any of you guys tell me if this is even a reasonable possibility that will give me at least 3 months of battery power on 1 or 2 AA batteries? And if so: What would be the relevant tutorials for me?

Also another question: Since I want to have redundancy in case my OpenHAB controller fails, it would be nice to have the
MySensors gateway attached to the LAN via ethernet, so that another controller can take over without needing its own gateway. I have read conflicting posts on the forums on whether an ethernet gateway will work with OpenHAB. So does it?

Thanks very much to anyone who takes the time to read or answer my post!
Cheers
Jay