Summary of BATTLAB-ONE REPLACE YOUR BATTERY, AND MONITORS YOUR BATTERY LIFE
Summary: Battery life estimation for IoT devices is tedious, requiring multiple instruments, manual logging, and spreadsheets. Conventional meters and oscilloscopes struggle with dynamic current profiles. Commercial tools like the ZS1100A plot current vs time to estimate battery life. Doug Peters created BattLab-One, a hardware/software battery laboratory that captures detailed power consumption and provides instant battery life estimates to speed design and optimization.
Parts used in the BattLab-One:
- BattLab-One hardware (custom device)
- BattLab-One software (firmware/PC interface)
- Battery model (used for life estimation)
- Device under test (DUT) connection/interface
- Current sensing circuitry (for plotting current vs time)
- Data logging capability
One of the problems developers in the world of IoT devices experience when building battery-powered devices over time is the process of measuring and estimating battery life, which can be very tedious.
The process is tedious and cumbersome, with multiple test equipment arrangements to capture current profiles for different firmware states, manual data logging, and spreadsheets for data input and calculations to get to an estimate of battery life for the device under test (DUT). It is also quite hard measuring the amount of energy being consumed by these IoT devices due to the dynamic nature of the current consumption, with conventional measurement methods like multimeter, and oscilloscope having drawbacks.
One method developers use is to use multiple instruments and hand calculations to arrive at an estimate of the energy consumption, but this method could be tasking. One device we have seen that solves this problem is the ZS1100A, which functions by plotting the current consumption vs time very accurately and in great detail, which can be used along with the battery model to estimate the overall battery life.
However, Doug Peters has built his own device called the BattLab-One (Battery Laboratory). It is a hardware/software solution that instantly captures insights of your design on battery life. His goal is to deliver a design tool that quickly and effortlessly provides an estimate of battery life and lets him optimize it for his projects, enabling him to spend more time on design and less time on measuring and calculating battery life.
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- What problem does BattLab-One solve?
It captures detailed current consumption and provides instant battery life estimates to simplify and speed battery life analysis. - How does BattLab-One estimate battery life?
By plotting current consumption versus time and using a battery model to estimate overall battery life. - Can conventional tools measure dynamic current consumption effectively?
No, conventional tools like multimeters and oscilloscopes have drawbacks measuring dynamic current consumption. - Does BattLab-One include software as well as hardware?
Yes, it is described as a hardware/software solution. - Is manual data logging required when using BattLab-One?
No, BattLab-One captures insights instantly, reducing the need for manual logging and spreadsheet calculations. - What is an alternative commercial device mentioned?
The ZS1100A is mentioned as a device that plots current consumption versus time for battery life estimation. - Who built BattLab-One?
Doug Peters built the BattLab-One. - What benefit does BattLab-One provide to developers?
It lets developers optimize battery life faster and spend more time on design instead of measuring and calculating battery life.
