14-11-2018, 20:39
As everyone I also like low power things! At this point I would like to give my point of view about this matter, and perhaps try to explain, why I haven't had, and still don't have any concerns about power consumption of the TX units.
Design a low power transmitter unit isn't hard, specially if at start you know which weather instruments will be used with it, which isn't the case with the WeatherDuino systems, mainly designed to allow the use of a wide range of weather instruments.
Ok, lets suppose that I will design a low power TX unit , then a user, per example, wants to use the Inspeed Vortex Digital anemometer, then what I say to him? Use a secondary power supply for the anemometer? Is this practical? I can continue... what is the range of an OOK transmitter powered by just 3.3V? You may argue: Give up of OOK transmitters and change to Lora, they work with 3,3V and require low power! Require low power to receive, but for transmitting... forget those small batteries, when transmitting they can reach a consumption of 200mA. Ah, the solution - reduce the duty cycle and transmit only every 15 minutes (like some weather stations do).
The main question is, what you have to abdicate to reach the desired "low power"
Just another bit, with a future in mind... Me and another member of the developers team, are already using ultrasonic anemometers, they are "low power" devices, but "low power" here means several Watts at 12V. With a setup like this, forget about a system working just with batteries...
Design a low power transmitter unit isn't hard, specially if at start you know which weather instruments will be used with it, which isn't the case with the WeatherDuino systems, mainly designed to allow the use of a wide range of weather instruments.
Ok, lets suppose that I will design a low power TX unit , then a user, per example, wants to use the Inspeed Vortex Digital anemometer, then what I say to him? Use a secondary power supply for the anemometer? Is this practical? I can continue... what is the range of an OOK transmitter powered by just 3.3V? You may argue: Give up of OOK transmitters and change to Lora, they work with 3,3V and require low power! Require low power to receive, but for transmitting... forget those small batteries, when transmitting they can reach a consumption of 200mA. Ah, the solution - reduce the duty cycle and transmit only every 15 minutes (like some weather stations do).
The main question is, what you have to abdicate to reach the desired "low power"
Just another bit, with a future in mind... Me and another member of the developers team, are already using ultrasonic anemometers, they are "low power" devices, but "low power" here means several Watts at 12V. With a setup like this, forget about a system working just with batteries...