Maximizing battery life?

[raisindot]

Apologies in advance--already did a search for this here but didn't come up with a definitive answer.

In any case, I understand the 7-8 hour battery life I've been getting with the PSR-500 is going to be a lot less than that 20-30 hours I use to get with my Pro-95. Then again, this life figure was based on battery abuse--having the backlight turn on with certain frequencies and doing many uploads and downloads with scanning software. Now that the pinball machine phase of this is over, and I'm pretty settled with my frequencies and settings, I want to see what I can do to squeeze a little more battery life out of this.

I've already turned off all backlight operations. Just wanted to know whether there are other things I should be doing. For example, should I deactivate the LEDs? I would think that they don't draw nearly as much current as the backlight, so I'd prefer not to lose them. I've switched over to rechargeables, so battery economy isn't such an issue anymore.

Any other suggestions?

Suzie

 

[don333]

SUZIE....See the link below. I use these (bought 8 so I could alternate and always have a charged set). With normal usage I'm getting 17 hours out of them. That's just doing normal scanning without a lot of backlight. I've been quite pleased.

http://thomasdistributing.com/shop/...html?SP_id=&osCsid=1qrlaf3gstg9rtvn8t7usoo4i5

Looks like you'll have to paste this into your browser.

Don
BNN 333

 

[Patch42]

I don't think the LED uses that much power, but under the theory that every little bit helps, you could lower the intensity of the LED. Go into the setup and reduce the values. While there are 256 possible values, in reality there seem to be about ten levels. You'll notice the discrete steps as you change the values. As long as you reduce the values in proportion to each other, the colors should remain pretty much the same.

Turning the audio level down will help extend battery life. If it's practical, hook up a separately powered speaker to the earphone jack. That will offload the audio amplification. Use an earphone when you can. It takes far less power to drive an earphone than to drive the speaker.

The backlight does seem to consume quite a bit of power. You've already turned that off so that's a good step.

If you're really serious about battery life, get a good external battery charger. The Maha MH-C9000 (http://thomasdistributing.com/maha-mh-c9000-battery-charger.php) is a great choice.