Battlab-One - Optimizing Battery Life for Your IoT Projects

In my experience building battery powered devices over the past few years, I have realized the process of measuring and estimating battery life can be very labor-intensive. The process is tedious, 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 my device under test (DUT).

I needed a better way, which led me to build the BattLab-One (Battery Laboratory). My goal was to deliver a design tool that quickly and effortlessly provided an estimate of battery life for my projects, enabling me to spend more time on design and less time on measuring and calculating battery life.

The Battlab-One Hardware:

• Replaces the battery for your IOT project by providing a power supply unit with standard battery voltage output and then uses the built-in current sense technology of the Battlab-One to capture the current consumption profile of your device
• Captures both active event and sleep mode current
• MSP 430 based device simulates standard batteries for Li-Ion, LiFePO4, Alkaline, NiMh, NiCd
• Provides voltages of 1.2V, 1.5V, 2.4V, 3.0V, 3.2, 3.6V, 3.7V, 4.5V at up to 450 mA, perfect for measuring your ESP8266 devices power demands.
• Enables trigger input to capture different firmware states and their impact on overall battery life
• Offers what-if optimization analysis to improve the design of your project/product
• USB power and data isolated from PSU output to avoid ground loops
• Open source hardware and software

The Battlab-One Software:

• Estimates the battery life of your IOT project using the DUT cutoff voltage, battery state of charge data, event duration, and captured active and sleep current profiles (requires Battlab-One hardware).
• Provides "what-if" optimization by letting you change your battery, current profiles, active and sleep duration as well as cutoff voltage to understand the impact on battery life for your IOT project
• Simulates standard batteries for Li-Ion, LiFePO4, Alkaline, NiMh, NiCd
• Enables trigger input feature enabling you to capture different firmware states and their impact on overall battery life
• Features the ability to save profiles so you can compare your DUT current profiles
• Interactive/detailed active current plot so you can look for anomalies and identify performance improvements for your IOT project