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Battery Life — Parallax Forums

Battery Life

geneB123geneB123 Posts: 1
edited 2013-04-16 18:33 in BASIC Stamp
I have the Basic Stamp HomeWork Board. Is it a good idea to unplug the battery when I'm not going to use if for several days or a week, or is the power usage so low that it isn't necessary?

Comments

  • bsjohnbsjohn Posts: 19
    edited 2013-04-15 15:04
    Moving the three position power switch to position 0 you turn off all power to the board. So at that point there won't be any leakage and up to you what you want to do. For me I pull my battery if not using it for a while just it case something comes in contacts with the board and shorts the switch on, I don't want to damage the ic.
  • Mike GreenMike Green Posts: 23,101
    edited 2013-04-15 16:27
    bsjohn's suggestions are good. Normally the processor on the HomeWork board draws a couple of mA, so a 9V battery would be good for a couple of hundred hours. If the processor is hooked to something else like a sensor or an LED, that can go up substantially. An LED can draw 20mA when on. If you have a program in the Stamp that turns off any LEDs and turns off sensors, then repeatedly executes a NAP or SLEEP statement, maybe turning on a sensor for a few milliseconds only every few seconds, the whole thing might reduce the average current drain to under 100uA. A 9V battery might last thousands of hours at that rate.

    The Wikipedia gives the capacity of an alkaline 9V as about 600maH.
  • ercoerco Posts: 20,256
    edited 2013-04-16 18:33
    Welcome to the forums. Since there is no power switch on the HW board, the answer is yes, remove the 9V battery as soon as you are done. The BoE has a 3-position swifch.
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