Topic | Battery life

Home Forums Mooshimeter Support Battery life

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    • #14494 Reply
      Chad
      Guest

      I don’t use my meter much, but it seems like each time I try to use it, the battery is dead. Just killed second set and I have had it since may 2016. I did install an SD card just in case I wanted to use the logging feature. It is supposed to last for two years on a set of batteries!? I’d prefer an off on switch! Do I have a defective unit?

      Using bundle firmware xx160 and downloaded firmware xxx829.

    • #14504 Reply
      Anonymous
      Guest

      An on off switch would have been nice because batteries have shelf lives a lot longer than 2 years. I have lots of other multi-meters and I am retired, so I won’t be using my moshimeter very often. Having to change the batteries every 2 years is wasteful and risks them corroding. I have the same problem with other instruments. I have a sound meter, a micro scale, a micrometer and a clamp ammeter that all are permanently on but I only use them very occasionally. At least with those I can remove the batteries easily to extend their lives otherwise I would be getting through a lot of batteries mainly doing nothing. Two years might seem a long time to a young person but at my age it isn’t long at all. New batteries have a shelf life of about 10 years.

      I put the moshimeter into transit mode when I am not using it.

    • #14505 Reply
      Anonymous
      Guest

      I would also agree with the request to add an On/Off Switch for the next Mooshimeter version.

      I don’t use my multimeters continuously, for my “use case” a switch would be very helpful. Good batteries (energizer ultimate lithium, e.g.) have a much energy and a lifetime of 20 years. You will probably never need to replace batteries when using the multimeter some hours a month.

      @Chad: if your mooshimeter eats to much energy, please check if the logging is activated (periodic write operations to SD card will take down the battery quickly).

    • #14546 Reply
      Anonymous
      Guest

      @admin (Has anyone seen James lately? ;) )

      I have been skeptical about power switch, but yesterday i found my meter somehow crashed, no blinks and cant be seen on phone. Had to open it, check batteries with other multimeter and both were at ~1,2V. After pressing reset button, it woke up and i was able to connect. App said that battery level is 49, but as i had case already open and fresh batteries at hands reach, i changed those.

      I thought that i had left it to log by mistake/bug, but there was only one log file on the card from couple weeks ago, with ~4k lines, which seems to match with my own memories (my setup had other problems, so i never needed to check that data). I’m 92% sure that those batteries were at 95+ in that apps display then. I had marked september first as change date to batteries, so ~50 days and there were not much more use than those 4k lines of log at 1 sec rate.

      Does mooshimeter get somehow excited from seeing bluetooth devices around it and use more power to chat with them or something? Could that or some other external things make it use radios or something to drain batteries at abnormal rates? If it might be for some external reason, should we have some troubleshooting log mode that checks battery voltage every hour or day? At least that would tell us when firmware hanged itself in storage. Or actually it would be more helpful to just dump all data that is available to that log and then we might be able to catch what is changing.

    • #14556 Reply
      admin
      Keymaster

      Hi guys,

      I’ve seen some reports of bad battery life over email as well, and I suspect that some cases are still due to the battery contact problem I wrote a blog post about here:

      Short Circuiting Battery Problem

      Chad your description sounds like you may be affected. Can you try putting a piece of tape over the side tabs of the battery contacts if you replace again?

      On-off switch: I’m considering this, but this would be on an entirely new product, not just an update to the Mooshimeter.

      Ville’s theory about battery life drain due to bluetooth activity around:
      The meter is doing BLE advertisement and anybody can connect to it. But it shouldn’t affect battery life unless some other device is connecting to it.

      Sorry I haven’t made a pass through the forums in 2 weeks… working on a new feature. Best
      ~James

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