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Stardate: 20190205.1822
Location: Work Cubicle
Input Device: Gemini PDA
Audio: Pete Tong - Essential Selection Spring 2000
Visual: Work desk with monitors, Das Keyboard 4 Ultimate, USB
fireplace, homemade USB xmas lantern w/lights.
Energy: 70%
Mental: 70%
Emotional: Amplified from coffee and techno music.
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I brought out my West Mountain Radio CBA II (Computerized
Battery Analyzer)[1] the other weekend and tested the
capacity of the batteries for the Cybah Rig. The batteries I have
been using are the APC M12USWH, which are the batteries used
for the APC Back-UPS Connect 50 Lithium Ion Network UPS /
Mobile Power Bank.[2] I have this running as backup for a
Raspberry Pi server at home and since I had a spare battery,
or so I thought, I decided to use the spare for the Cybah
Rig and swap out the batteries for charging.
Previously, one of the batteries had failed while I was
writing a phlog entry and I lost most of the contents of the
file I was writing. [3] This prompted for the battery
capacity testing.
My setup was basically my Fujitsu P1610 running Windows XP
Tablet and Offline Edition running CBA II software, CBA II
unit, a bunch of test cables, and the APC USB battery. The
battery's capacity is 11400mAh. During my test I set the
load at 1 Amp @ 5 volts. Typically, the Cybah Rig runs less
than 800 milliAmps at 5 volts. This is including the
Raspberry Pi Zero W and the Fujitsu FMD-250w. Here's a pic
of the setup.[4]
The first battery, which I labeled as APC1 turned out to be
good. I tested this one with 5 volts at 1 Amp load. This
resulted in 33.09Ah total, which I found strange since the
battery is only rated at 11400mAh. I might need to retest
this one, but the capacity is good. Here is the graph of the
results. [5]
The second battery was labeled APC2 and this one turned out
to be the bad one. It resulted in only 1.24Ah total. I will
retest this one as well, but I think it's spent. Hopefully,
I can take it apart and replace the internal battery cheaper
than buying a new one. Here are the results. [6]
I had tested the load of the Cybah Rig with a neat little
Chinese USB muli-tester (UM25C) that I picked up on Amazon.
[7] It's pretty neat because it can test voltage, current,
resistance, etc., accepts different cable types, has a pretty
display. It also has bluetooth that you can view the data
on your laptop or Android device in real time as well as save
the data from your tests. Not sure how much I trust the app
so I have it running on test devices. The USB tester is so
much better than the makeshift ghetto rigs I set up with my
multimeter. Plus it logs the data.
Here is a picture of the UM25C attached to the APC USB
battery on one end and the Cybah Rig on the other. The meter
shows the current load of 0.5429Amps at 4.986 volts. [8]
Here is a picture of the graphed results of the Cybah
Rig with the Face-Mounted Display in use and the Raspberry
Pi Zero W running system updates. I only ran it for about
10 minutes and then shut down after the updates were done.
The data was exported from the Android application
and imported into Excel for the pivot graph. The total load
did not go over 0.9Amps (or 900 milliAmps.) [9]
If the capacity of the APC1 battery is truly 33.09Ah, I can
get over 36 hours of runtime for the Cybah Rig! Not that I
need that much...my eyes would probably start bleeding and
I'd be vomiting well before I hit that threshold.
<------------------------------------------------------------------->
(HTM) [1] West Mountain Radio
(HTM) [2] APC Back-UPS Connect 50
(DIR) [3] 20190120_cybah_rig
(IMG) [4] APC M12USWH Battery Capacity Testing Setup
- APC M12USWH 11400mAh, 41.2Wh(rating), 5v@2.4A USB, 5v@1A USB
- Fujitsu P1610 -> USB type A male to USB type B male ->
West Mountain CBA II -> Home made power pole to T connector
pigtail -> T Connector to alligator clip pigtail ->
male jumper wire to male jumper wire -> female
breadboard jumper wire to USB -> APC M12USWH Mobile
Power Pack.
(IMG) [5] Good battery.
- Graph of CBA II capacity test results for APC 1
battery (5 volts @ 1A load, 33.09Ah total)
(IMG) [6] Bad battery.
- Graph of CBA II capacity test results for APC 2
battery (5 volts @ 1A load, 1.24Ah total.)
(HTM) [7] UM25C USB Meter
(IMG) [8] UM25C USB Load Test
- UM25C USB meter hooked up to Cyber Rig showing load @
0.5429A @ 4.986v
(IMG) [9] UM25C results
- Graphed results of Cybah Rig from the UM25C USB meter.
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