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Andrea-Fox / peopleCounter

Code for a cheap people counter based on VL53L1X sensor and ESP32/8266
The Unlicense
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High power consumption -> not possible to run via battery #9

Open LC7894 opened 3 years ago

LC7894 commented 3 years ago

I measured the power consumption of the sensor in a setup with an ES8266 NodeMCU and found it to use (on average) 80mA. One of the main reasons for the high power consumption is the WiFi that is always on. Therefore, using a battery as power source is not suitable except you want to change the battery very often. This is a problem when there is no outlet nearby or you don't want to use a cord. According to the docs of the sensor it should be possible to use the deep sleep mode of the ESP and wake it up when someone passes the sensor:

image

I'll just leave this here as a suggestion for further development of the algorithm 🙂 (Maybe I am able to find a solution on my own, but I have to learn a lot about ESP programing until I reach this point)

Link to the docs: https://www.st.com/resource/en/user_manual/dm00474730-vl53l1x-api-user-manual-stmicroelectronics.pdf

Andrea-Fox commented 3 years ago

I know that the consumption are very high, butI wanted to always have the sensor connected to the wifi, in order to minimize the time that passes between passing under the sensor and turning on (or off) the light.
I know that turning on and off the wifi should be almost immediate, however I think that even at that point the consumption given by the VL53L1X sensor and the ESP itself (with wifi off) make it impossible to connect the whole device to a battery and have a long battery life. However, if you manage to create a sensor that works with battery and has a long battery life (at least a few months I would say), let me know

LC7894 commented 3 years ago

The delay between passing the sensor and turning on/off the light is definitely a disadvantage when it comes to turning off the WiFi to save some battery. In addition (as you said) the consumption of the sensor + ESP itself with wifi off is still high. So that is another challenge.

I'll let you know if I managed to create a sensor with a long battery life (long = > 6 months) and a delay that is acceptable. But I see some challenges here so let's see.

avdept commented 3 years ago

How about to use zigbee instead of wifi? Should use less power

Andrea-Fox commented 3 years ago

Is there a way to use zigbee with the esp32/esp8266?

mksmo commented 3 years ago

Is there a way to use zigbee with the esp32/esp8266?

Here is a library to connect atmega328 with cc2530. https://github.com/VertorixAU/Vertorix_VT1100_Mini