Checking the runtime of a Heltec LoRa V3 running Meshtastic powered by a 4000mAh lithium battery

checking the runtime of a htech Laura V3 board running mesh tastic powered by a 4,000 Mah lithium battery hi guys welcome back to the channel so we've got here on these htech V3 Lura boards running mesh tastic there the antenna there it's 868 Megs it's connected to this uh lithium battery here it came out of an old Energizer power bank that met a bit of an untimely end a few years ago but the battery survived which is good there's a protection circuit on the battery just there dw1 dual mosfet package on that board the clips across it are for monitoring voltage on the multimeter here 4.21 volts so in my opinion that's as good as charged so I'm disconnecting it from the charger now so it's now disconnected from the charger and now we're going to see how long that runs for the voltage is slightly dropped to 4.15 but that's actually fine 4.16 4.15 it's more or less close to full charge and I'm going to leave this to run I'm going to do a time check now fact I'm going to do a time check on camera so you can actually see what the time is if I bring my phone in it's 10:40 and the date is the 29th of January Monday the 29th of January so my plan with this is to box this all up in a weatherproof enclosure I'm not sure how weatherproof this antenna is but I'll soon find out and put it outside on the window ledge and have a solar panel connected to it to charge the battery during the day which as long as the batter is close to fall at should be too much of an issue and during the night the battery will then take over running the device so the run time is to find out whether it can be used for that purpose so here goes nothing okay so let's see where we are with this now it's now 20 3 according to the clock on the camera try to be careful with this that don't cause any to go around wrong uh the battery is still showing all three of its little bars the display is a little bit shimmery on camera because think that's just down to the way it works um I've got to try and do this without poking things I shouldn't try that one there we go I'm not sure if you could see that but it says the batteries are 79% for volts and that's uh after not quite quite 5 hours of run time just 20 minutes shy of that so I can bring my phone in just to do the time check and I'll bring it in there uh 20 3 which is about 5 hours now I've spent all day doing my self assessment tax return G don't want to do that again but I'm going to have to do it again next year lovely and and that's what I've been doing while this has been just discharging slowly so if it's dropped from 4 to is to where it is now in about 4 volts from about 4.1 4.2 is in the space of 5 hours then that should be okay could be better but that should be okay to use with a solar panel charging it during the day and OB running on the battery during the night might be a bit of a struggle during the winter months but during the summer it shouldn't be too much of a problem so we'll catch this again probably be in the morning okay so I'm back home now and it's uh 25 8 I've been out working a little while and the device battery is now down to about 68% yeah it looks like 68% so there's the battery there not been touched the only thing I've done is press the button on the device to wake the screen up so the last check was about 3:00 I believe so we're looking at about 5 hours since I last checked yep about 5 hours sounds about right and we'll just confirm the time by bringing my phone into shots 2023 yeah let's pick this up in the morning then I think okay so here we are at 7:17 a.m. the next morning and I'll bring the clock to confirm that and the metastic device is at 45 46% and that's not too bad so I'm going to get myself ready for work and I'm going to go out to work I'm going to see where it is when I come back I have a feeling it'll probably run out by then okay so as predicted the battery has run out after I've come back from work after came back from work about 20 minutes ago and it's now 8:57 on whatever today's date is you know what I've forgotten it is is I have a nosy and get my camera to cooperate 30th of January so it's 857 on the 30th of January and that's when I find the device is the batter is reporting 0% at 3.26 volts which so stuck in this boot loop but it isn't anything to do with the dw1 mosfit package X I'm pretty sure that that thing is set to switch off at a slightly lower voltage than that I can't remember the actual specs of the dw1 so I'm going to plug that back into charge now the charger isn't plugged in fact it's disconnected at both ends so I was going to plug this into charge I'm just going to pause the camera whilst I do that okay so I've plugged the charger into the device at that end and hopefully when I plug it into this end a bit of lock normal service the charger will plug in will be resumed there we go it's still in its boot loop so might be able to get it out of that let's try that okay it's stuck in it boot loop at the moment not 100% sure why just pause whil St find out what's going on there okay so to get it out of the boot loop and it's now plugged into charge I just pressed both buttons at the same time and that seemed to cure it I don't actually know what I did but that apart from press both buttons at the same time so that's now on charge and I'll bring the multimeter in and that's showing 3.45 volts going to the VY and it's already showing two bars on the on the battery indicator but it's not actually showing the device is charging some slight Quirk with it it doesn't do that until it gets to the top end but it's now on charge and I think that was a success so about I'd say I'll have to look at the footage actually so I'll have a look at the footage and find out how long it lasted okay so having had a look at the footage it looks like that battery will run the mesh tastic for about a day so that's not so bad which is perfectly fine 24 hours so it'll always be charged up at some point and there'll always be some charge in the in the in the cell hopefully it's currently just reaching the end of its charge because it only indicates actual actual charging when it's close to the top I don't know why it does that on this particular device I think other devices it will indicate that the device is charging throughout but this one for whatever reason it's just indicating close to the top close to the 4.2 volts so it's showing the little lightning bolt indicator on the display there I'm just trying to press the button if it will let me do that and it says that it is charging so all it leaves me to do is now disconnect everything so I'll just pause the camera while I do that and that's now everything disconnected I've got uh the meter across the battery I'll bring that in the meter saying it's at 4.13 so it hasn't completely charged it but it's charged it sufficiently so that's now the antenna's disconnected the board's disconnected the batter is not connected to the device it's not needed at the moment now I'll put that to one side because obviously I've got my holiday to America coming up and I won't be able to do much more with the mesh tastic stuff until after that when I get other devices and an enclos for for this device to put it in so I can put it outside and a solar panel to run it cuz that's my plan anyway 73 for now I'll catch you in the next one hope you enjoyed the video and I'll try and get some stuff filmed while I'm in America cuz that's something I'm planning on doing hopefully all being well because as you know I did bravely modify my Yu f2d there's something else I'm going to bravely do as well which will be filmed on a different video video so I'm actually waiting in at the moment because my car is um at the garage getting it wheel bearing sorted out cuz I think they're knackered anyway 73 for now and I'll catch you in the next one

Channel: Paul McGee M0WNU

Views: 5,718

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Id: q9K-B2PBjUY

Length: 11min 12sec (672 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 31 2024