Panther Logger 6: Power Management

The Panther Logger board is designed for long term deployments powered by a battery with or without solar charging or other charging source. During deployments the entire board can be powered from a battery and attached sensors powered from one of the available 3.3V, 5V or 12V regulated power supplies at the convenient screw terminal connections.   

When you first start programming the board for your application you will power it from USB cable attached to your computer and if using a cell modem then you will also need a battery (battery recommendations here) attached to the two pin screw terminal block marked "Battery." This will provide power to the cell modem and charge the battery. The battery can be charged when either USB power is connected to the micro USB connector or a DC power source (e.g. solar panel) is plugged into the two pin screw terminal block marked "solar." It can also be powered from a USB wall outlet if one is available near your deployment location. All input power must be less than 10V. 

Current limits (mAmps) are limited by each power supply as stated in board specifications (here). The WiFi and LoRa modems are powered from the switched 3.3VS rails which has a max current rating of 800 mAmps. The WiFi and LoRa modems could use up to 230 and 87 mAmps , respectively, while sending/receiving data. Ensure that attached sensors and peripherals do not exceed the current limits including current draw from these modems if they are in use.

The microprocessor can go into sleep and deep sleep modes and all power rails except the 5V and VCC rails can be turned off in code to save power.  So, it is very possible to build up an environmental monitoring observatory platform with  the Panther Logger that sleeps at low microamps range in between loop iterations. We give examples of this in the Telelogger tutorials.