Reach RS built-in LiFePO4 battery

Reach RS / RS+ Hardware integration
1

Hi there,

I used the Reach RS a few weeks ago pretty successful in the field in the southern Africa. Though I was pretty lucky to operate close to a NTRIP caster I used two units one as base receiver and one as rover. One of these days setup the fresh charged base around 2:56 PM and left it on over night as I wanted to do an early field survey (incl. climbing a mountain) the next morning. When I return after an successful summit the next day around 11 AM the base was powered-off. As I can see from the logs the base run until 10:15 AM. Long story short, that makes around 19.3 hours and is not even close the documented 30 hours operating time.

Is there any method to see in the logs what drain the battery that “quick”?

There could be some factors I’m not fully aware of. For example,

  • I might have not charge the battery fully,
  • the relative high temperature difference drained it faster (night ~0°C vs. day >30°C) or
  • the setup of the radio output power to max. 20 dBm (@ 9.11 kb/s).

Happy end of the story is, that I could download caster data from the close-by station which fills my survey gap. But maybe it’s useful to add an additional note, that the max operational power can variate depending on the settings?!

Regards Valentin

ps: And is there not an option to inform the rover unit over radio (custom NMEA message?) about the status/power level of the base?

1 Like
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Does anybody has similar experiences? What are you guys max operating time with internal LiFePO4 battery?

3

Howzit,

The low temperatures will cause the battery to drain faster.
Also likely worth dropping radio power + kb/s rate etc to lowest rate you can.

Also likely worth getting an external USB power pack for base if you are going to leave it for extended periods.

PS: Trignet is a great free NTRIP service in South Africa. Works well if range <20km.

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