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Extended battery life for remote shooting

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Offline Mlapse

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Re: Extended battery life for remote shooting
« Reply #20 on: 31 / March / 2018, 13:01:28 »
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Quote
and you can do with a lighter 5v converter. most cigarette adaptors are 2.4A or less
I think you meant to say that "and your can do without a lighter 5V ....  ?
[/quote]

I thought the 5V rail was for the hdd and raspberry
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Offline waterwingz

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Re: Extended battery life for remote shooting
« Reply #21 on: 31 / March / 2018, 13:15:24 »
Quote from: Mlapse on 31 / March / 2018, 13:01:28
I thought the 5V rail was for the hdd and raspberry
Correct - I missed that. 

But if you are going to use an lm2596 board for the 4.2V camera voltage, then buying two and running the Pi/HDD @ 5V using the second one seems like a good idea too?
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Offline Mlapse

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Re: Extended battery life for remote shooting
« Reply #22 on: 31 / March / 2018, 13:28:31 »
Quote from: waterwingz on 31 / March / 2018, 13:15:24
Quote from: Mlapse on 31 / March / 2018, 13:01:28
I thought the 5V rail was for the hdd and raspberry
Correct - I missed that. 

But if you are going to use an lm2596 board for the 4.2V camera voltage, then buying two and running the Pi/HDD @ 5V using the second one seems like a good idea too?
sure, but most of these cheap things don't run stable/continuously over 1.5A (although sold as 3A).
so if that covers your usage you can.
and although the slightly higher power consumption i like instant visual confirmation of batterie voltage when I'm at the rig instead of bringing my multimeter, something like this: (and i usually glue some 2cm of 10mmx10mm U shaped aluminum profile on the lm chip for a better temperature)

https://www.amazon.com/DROK-Converter-Step-down-Regulator-Stabilizer/dp/B019RKVMKU/ref=pd_sbs_23_4?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=B019RKVMKU&pd_rd_r=TCBGNCMW9H52MB80T0RV&pd_rd_w=e4d7C&pd_rd_wg=OQjcu&psc=1&refRID=TCBGNCMW9H52MB80T0RV
« Last Edit: 31 / March / 2018, 13:36:18 by Mlapse »
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Offline waterwingz

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Re: Extended battery life for remote shooting
« Reply #23 on: 31 / March / 2018, 13:51:31 »
Quote from: Mlapse on 31 / March / 2018, 13:28:31
and although the slightly higher power consumption i like instant visual confirmation of batterie voltage when I'm at the rig instead of bringing my multimeter, something like this: (and i usually glue some 2cm of 10mmx10mm U shaped aluminum profile on the lm chip for a better temperature)
www.amazon.com/DROK-Converter-Step-down-Regulator-
Funny ... I have a couple of those "on order" right now - for the same reason.

And depending on your Pi model,  1 amp is plenty.
« Last Edit: 31 / March / 2018, 13:53:05 by waterwingz »
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Offline Sdack

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Re: Extended battery life for remote shooting
« Reply #24 on: 17 / April / 2018, 08:31:31 »
Hi Guys,

Just been getting confused by all the terminology surrounding trickle / fast / float battery chargers and wondered if someone could confirm that this would be a sensible choice for a mains powered constant top up of a 12 volt car battery

https://www.ebay.com.au/itm/HI-Q-12V-Automatic-LCD-Digital-Car-Motorcycle-Smart-Fast-Trickle-Battery-Charger/172895244520?hash=item28415c10e8:g:Qy4AAOSwI7tZzxD5

It seems microprocessor controlled for fast if required but non overcharging.

Thanks for all the other suggestions too.  I'm going to go with the digital readout buck converters from now on, I do like the idea of instant state readout at the rig without the need for a multimeter, although ultimately I'd like to be able to monitor the voltage remotely along with my image uploads and temperature reports.

Cheers

Sdack
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Offline ottokar

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Re: Extended battery life for remote shooting
« Reply #25 on: 19 / April / 2018, 06:33:54 »
Quote
Min power draw - 3.4 Watts
Max power draw - 12.5 Watts
Average power draw  8 Watts

firstly, did you just average 3.4 and 12.5 to get the number 8? - does it really spend half the time at min power and half at full, or is it more like 95% of the time idle and 5% at max power?

 Furthermore, your above setup is with a hard drive - would your battery powered setup also have a hard drive? If not, that could be a 3 watt saving.

 (Plus perhaps you only take photos max 16 hours a day, not 24.)

 Also, I would turn the Pi and the camera off when they're not active. Have a microcontroller - which would have a similar power draw to a wrist watch - and every 10 minutes it turns on your camera, and every 2 hours it turns on the Pi, it does nothing else.

 The camera could have an autorun script to say - 'if no usb power, take a photo and shut down, else if there is usb power, sit and wait for the pi to talk to me' - and the Pi could have a startup script to say 'download photos from camera, turn camera off, upload photos to web, then shutdown.'

 (You would need to solder wires to the camera's power button to do this, so that an electrical signal from the microcontroller would be able to simulate a physical press of the button.)

 So all these possibly mean the power consumption is drastically reduced - if the Pi is now on for 2 minutes every 2 hours instead of 120 minutes, that's 95%+ power saved right there. The camera could also be mostly switched off, depending on the time interval. (If the time interval is very short, then any increased power consumption for startup and shut down could outweigh the saving from completely turning off.)

 Then even a modest usb battery pack should suffice for a few days - one with 10000mAH capacity has an energy capacity of 50WattHours (5 volts x 10 000 milliamp hours), so if your *average* power consumption is now 0.5 watts, it would last for 100 hours.
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Offline ottokar

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Re: Extended battery life for remote shooting
« Reply #26 on: 19 / April / 2018, 06:53:13 »
turns out there is already lots of good thinking about this here;

https://chdk.setepontos.com/index.php?topic=12285.0
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Offline Sdack

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Re: Extended battery life for remote shooting
« Reply #27 on: 19 / April / 2018, 08:16:08 »
Hi Ottokar,
Thanks for your interest.
Quote
firstly, did you just average 3.4 and 12.5 to get the number 8? - does it really spend half the time at min power and half at full, or is it more like 95% of the time idle and 5% at max power?
The measuring device (similar to a Kill-A-Watt I believe but an Australian one from the cheap supermarket Aldi), had a readout for the maximum and minimum but no average.  However whenever I looked at the meter it was sitting at 8 watts, with the occasional flicker up or down.
Quote
Furthermore, your above setup is with a hard drive - would your battery powered setup also have a hard drive? If not, that could be a 3 watt saving.
If I can keep the power draw low, I think a local hard drive (ie. separate from the camera SD card), is good insurance and facilitates maximum quality image storage locally with minimum Internet data usage.
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(Plus perhaps you only take photos max 16 hours a day, not 24.)
My main thrust with these cameras is to record construction projects, so a working day of 9 hours, 7:30 am to 4:30 pm is the most likely duration for shooting.
Quote
Also, I would turn the Pi and the camera off when they're not active. Have a microcontroller - which would have a similar power draw to a wrist watch - and every 10 minutes it turns on your camera, and every 2 hours it turns on the Pi, it does nothing else.
My interval is currently 60 seconds, which, when played back at 25 frames per second (I'm in PAL country), gives a speed up factor of 1500.  This gives me approximately 20 seconds of material for each day (9 hours x 60 images = 540 images at 25 fps), so turning the camera off between shots likely wouldn't save much because the lens would retract and extend, which I suspect gives the 12.5W peak on the measuring device.
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The camera could have an autorun script to say - 'if no usb power, take a photo and shut down, else if there is usb power, sit and wait for the pi to talk to me' - and the Pi could have a startup script to say 'download photos from camera, turn camera off, upload photos to web, then shutdown.'

 (You would need to solder wires to the camera's power button to do this, so that an electrical signal from the microcontroller would be able to simulate a physical press of the button.)
Aside from the difficulty of opening up a super compact device like an Ixus 160, the contacts are insanely delicate, so it's a lot less daunting to rig something to hold the power button down constantly and simply add or remove power via a dummy battery connected to a relay.

I was tempted by your power saving suggestions until I realized that the immediate upload of thumbnail images was one of the core features that got me into this.  And without the Raspberry Pi, I lose that assurance.

Old school time-lapsers would probably laugh and call me too soft for this game but I humbly confess to making too many mistakes to leave a rig for weeks or months on end without knowing that I pressed "GO"

Thanks for your suggestions though

Sdack
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Offline Mlapse

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Re: Extended battery life for remote shooting
« Reply #28 on: 02 / September / 2019, 03:42:15 »
Quote from: waterwingz on 31 / March / 2018, 13:51:31
Quote from: Mlapse on 31 / March / 2018, 13:28:31
and although the slightly higher power consumption i like instant visual confirmation of batterie voltage when I'm at the rig instead of bringing my multimeter, something like this: (and i usually glue some 2cm of 10mmx10mm U shaped aluminum profile on the lm chip for a better temperature)
www.amazon.com/DROK-Converter-Step-down-Regulator-
Funny ... I have a couple of those "on order" right now - for the same reason.


I know this has been a long time since we talked about it, but i have one that has become unstable now.
The strange thing is, when it heats up the display still indicates 4.2V, but my fluke and the camera tells me it is dropping closer to 3.5V.
(probably the display is hooked up very close to the lm2596s, before the cap.
This particular power supply has been running 18 month. So it is safe to assume it is a capacitor that has exceeded it's lifespan, creating more and more noise on the feed to the camera.
And I think this is the reason that my longest running camera is deceased. (now it shoots only black frames at -920)

This means the indicator has no added value if you do not check the voltage in the logs as a comparison, See a growing difference between the 2? replace!
« Last Edit: 02 / September / 2019, 03:48:37 by Mlapse »
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