Power Draw

chipaudettechipaudette
in Cyton
If anyone was curious, I measured the power draw of two of the OpenBCI systems.  You can see the details here:


For the 8-channel, 8-bit system, the current draw was 40 mA.  For the 16-channel system (which is a 32-bit system), the current draw was 62 mA.  I did not measure the 8-channel, 32-bit system.

These measurements were performed while each system was streaming its EEG data using its built-in RFDuino BT link.  Neither was recording to SD.

These measurements suggest a battery life (for 4xAA alkaline cells) of 26-40 hours.  That's pretty darned good!  That's definitely enough battery life to take these systems out of our homes and labs and dark superhero caves.  With this kind of battery life, let's get out into the world and show off our EEG hacks!

Chip

Comments

  • biomurphbiomurph Brooklyn, NY
    Thanks Chip! I had not verified the 16 channel power draw. That looks to be as expected with the two ADS ICs running.

    We are setting up a little tutorial on how to measure the battery voltage with the PIC or ATmega. It requires a little hardware hacking, but that's the fun part!

    I'll post a link to the tutorial here when it's up.
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