How can i measure the current drawn from a lipo battery connected to a particle Xenon? The obvious method coming to my mind is to break a wire in the lipo battery and connect a multimeter in series. But i dont want to mess up my lipo battery. Any other methods where i dont have to damage any wires :)?
With the Xenon plugged into a breadboard, connect the LiPo neg to GND using a breadboard jumper. Then connect your multimeter in series with the LiPo positive terminal to the LI+ on the Xenon again using a breadboard jumper. Simple enough I think.
1 Like
What sort of accuracy are you looking for?
If you intend to measure the sleep current a standard multimeter won’t be of much use.
1 Like
I use these a lot:
https://www.amazon.com/Racingirl-NIDICI-Silicone-Upgraded-Connector/dp/B07G932BYS/
The Female end allows you to connect the Li-Po to breadboards & test equipment easily.
1 Like
Yeah i intend to measure the sleep current as well. Working on a research project so want something accurate. I would prefer to use some board, that can measure both the current and voltage and is able to send the information to the photon via I2C/SPI. I have seen some boards by adafruit but they dont seem to be good for low current measurements. Any recommendations on what i can use?
Thanks in advance!
Thanks @Rftop i will take a look at the wires
One of the cheaper alternatives is to use a µCurrent GOLD to measure sleep current.
I use a Photon to read measurements from an ADS1115.
(2) differential 16-bit channels for Voltage Measurement (Li-Po)
(2) differential 16-bit channels for the Current Measurement (µCurrent Gold)
I believe it will run ~50 sample sets per second. The Photon is used to integrate the results to calculate Total Power Used and report the average values for each second.
Several folks here have nice bench-top units, but I would expect to spend several thousand USD.
Hopefully you will get other recommendations too 