I modded my SX210 to run on external power (I made a 'fake' battery out of extruded polystyrene, which has wires leading to a bench PSU).Using the PSU built in meter (it only displays the hundreds mAh) I ran a few rough tests, and I was a bit surprised.
All the tests were done at 4V. I did not notice any difference in power consumption between CHDK and non CHDK. I was looking over some old threads of mine and seen that if I was loading CHDK via the firmware update method, it used more power. This doesn't appear to be the case anymore, at least ot on the SX210.
2. When the lens is out, it will use another 20 mAh, which will stop use when the lens is back. So all the time lapse scripts waste energy by keeping the lens out.
After looking at the functions in funcs_by_name.csv I've notice many functions such as EnableFocusLens_FW EnableZoomEncoderCircuit_FW EnableIrisActuator_FW EnableMechaCircuit_FW and so on. My next steps will be to try their disable functions from LUA and see if anything happens with the voltage.
I want to route my power through one of those USB stick power counters that show the voltage/amps as well, I have one that shows mAs also.
It's a trade off against the energy required to move the lens in & out. Which you won't be able to measure on your PSU meter of course. For long intervals between shots its worth moving the lens in & out. For shorter interval, leave the lens out. The question is what defines "short". My guess would be five or more minutes but I have no data to support that.
--DisableMechaCircuit_FWcall_func_ptr(0xffac19ac)--DisableFocusLens_FWcall_func_ptr(0xffac1368)--DisableFocusPiCircuit_FWcall_func_ptr(0xffac19cc)--DisableIris_FWcall_func_ptr(0xffac1858)--DisableIrisActuator_FWcall_func_ptr(0xffab02c0)--DisableISAutoGyroOffset_FWcall_func_ptr(0xffac257c)--DisableZoomEncoderCircuit_FWcall_func_ptr(0xffac1a14)--DisableZoomPiCircuit_FWcall_func_ptr(0xffac19f0)--Terminatedccd_FWcall_func_ptr(0xff86d530)--QuietImager_FWcall_func_ptr(0xff8f4998)--CancelImager_FWcall_func_ptr(0xff8f4a44)
If we could generalize the "poke a variable to leave the lens out" trick for all cameras it would be a useful feature for some of my more popular scripts.
So I tried the following stuff in my script, after taking the photo:(...)Absolutely no change. I didn't investigate if those functions require any parameters though.
Well, I tried to cut off the SD power too,
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