03-08-2015, 18:05
Hi,
The buck converter won't be 100% efficient, so I doubt if the power saving when dropping to 9 volts would be worthwhile. It might be more significant if dropping directly down to the 5 volts required by the basic ATMEL microcontroller.
Using an off-the-shelf Arduino board does have the disadvantage that the power drain is much larger than for a "custom" transmitter/controller as used in most commercial stations. For example the power consumed will be literally 1000s of times higher than for a "Fine Offset" manufactured transmitter (which uses two AA cells). So I think most "Duinos" will use either a "line" (mains) supply, or quite a substantial Solar Panel and (rechargeable) battery combination.
Of course the two "prime movers" (Werk_ and _Bob) are located where they probably have more solar power than they know what to do with. But for those of us in higher latitudes, solar powering can be quite problematic. There is a thread on this forum where somebody was attempting to design a "reliable" solar supply, and (IMHO) the figures were quite frightening, but perhaps over-pessimistic.
For "Solar" installations there are numerous opportunities for adopting more sophisticated switching and control functions to improve efficiency, but the design is far from trivial. Some of those that have tried, untimately just suggest to increase the panel and battery size by 30% and use "simple" electronics!
Cheers, Alan.
The buck converter won't be 100% efficient, so I doubt if the power saving when dropping to 9 volts would be worthwhile. It might be more significant if dropping directly down to the 5 volts required by the basic ATMEL microcontroller.
(03-08-2015, 15:38)danb35 Wrote: I'd expect most installations will be using some sort of battery to power it.
Using an off-the-shelf Arduino board does have the disadvantage that the power drain is much larger than for a "custom" transmitter/controller as used in most commercial stations. For example the power consumed will be literally 1000s of times higher than for a "Fine Offset" manufactured transmitter (which uses two AA cells). So I think most "Duinos" will use either a "line" (mains) supply, or quite a substantial Solar Panel and (rechargeable) battery combination.
Of course the two "prime movers" (Werk_ and _Bob) are located where they probably have more solar power than they know what to do with. But for those of us in higher latitudes, solar powering can be quite problematic. There is a thread on this forum where somebody was attempting to design a "reliable" solar supply, and (IMHO) the figures were quite frightening, but perhaps over-pessimistic.
For "Solar" installations there are numerous opportunities for adopting more sophisticated switching and control functions to improve efficiency, but the design is far from trivial. Some of those that have tried, untimately just suggest to increase the panel and battery size by 30% and use "simple" electronics!
Cheers, Alan.