Arduino Project to Product Part 9: Run for a Year on Batteries – Maker.io | Digi-Key Electronics

With the power minimization methods in place from previous videos in this series, Shawn Hymel completes the LoRa Radio project by disabling brown out detection and calculating the number of WDT (watch dog timer) cycles needed the achieve the desired one year of project battery life running on two AAA alkaline cells. Shawn includes and explains the related math and the Arduino code edits needed to finalize the project design.

RELATED ITEMS
296-40128-1-ND – Current Sense Amplifier

RELATED VIDEOS
Arduino Project to Product – Part 1 – How to Accurately Measure Current

Arduino Project to Product – Part 2– How to Calculate Battery Life

Arduino Project to Product – Part 3 – How to Build an Arduino on a Breadboard

Arduino Project to Product – Part 4 – Optimizing Operating Voltage

Arduino Project to Product – Part 5 – Testing LoRa Range

Arduino Project to Product – Part 6 – Choosing a Voltage Regulator

Arduino Project to Product – Part 7 – How to Measure Small Currents

Arduino Project to Product – Part 8 – How to Put Arduino to Sleep

Project:
“LoRa project example related to our Arduino Project to Product series”

[viniciusfriasaleite]

Hello, Shawn, really liked this series! It would be cool to test it on the real world, letting it function over a year!

[thorleifjacobsen]

What? Did it stop? At part 9? I need part 10, 11, 12, 13! I'm creating the exact same thing, hopefully to watch over my boat 400 meters away in the summer and about 50 meters away during winter. Want to add a PIR and temperature sensor. Running on 2x AA battereies. Need it to last about 6 months. So I've calculated an average of 0.2mA. I only need the PIR sensor to work as an interrupt to wake it up and set "movement=1". The temp sensor should only report maybe every hour or so.. Sensor should also disable itself when I turn on the ignition for the boat. So need an external "off / on" feature.

All of your work seems to fit my application so I might rip-of your design and create my own circuit for it much based on this video tutorials. :) Thanks a lot for this, I've followed your private channel aswell hopefully I see more like this. This gave me the old ben heck show feeling.. A+

[dcpowered]

Another awesome tutorial from Shawn Hymel! Please keep up the great work!

[bogdannica]

Amazing project and very well explained A to Z ! Congratulations !

I would like to ask if this solution would work with any lora gateway as is or do i need to tweak the software for the lora module in any way ? I'm planning on making a couple of such sensors for my backyard and my neighbour has a kerlink lora gateway.

[AdityaMehendale]

Cool tutorial, Shawn! Would you consider an MSP430 or an STMxxx as an alternative to the ATMega328 for even lower power-consumption? (Granted, that at some point the RF duty-cycle determines the power, not the MCU.)

[maffysdad]

I understood the first bit (Woohoo!)... Then had that sweeping airplane moment during the math (Boo!)... Then understood it again (Woohoo!) until the math... Whilst I have a 12v 9A battery as a power supply, this is more to power the external items as everything is in a field, so I was thinking of using the LT3009 voltage regulator at it's 3v3 purchase, but maybe a couple of 18650's will do, though as there is a sensor I'll need to connect the GND's. I think my voltage regulator is going to draw more current than my ATMega328P-PU, but, and here comes either a yes or no from those that know, will the LT3009 3v3 version powered by a 12v 9A battery have enough current to manage the ATMega328P-PU in it's basic form as in a previous episode and in a suitable sleep mode so that it can detect an external condition (say a knock/tilt sensor triggering the second interrupt) as everything else out there can be activated by the ATMega turning on a transistor which in turn can activate a MOSFET to draw current from the 12v 9A battery for the higher current stuff. So yeah, in my head stuff is coming together, but for standby stuff I need that really low current standby as events don't happen very often.

[tahirahidjo]

Please what ultrasonic sensor would you recommend for a product or is the HC-SR04 okay?
I am also considering the cost.
Thank you.

[alberttyong]

Why were the external devices removed when you were reconfiguring the fuses?

[joshuaoduroadu]

Great tutorial but got lost in the maths.