In the comments from my prior blog ( Post Christmas shopping find - TC2-DSO review. ) , dougw had mentioned "One thing to check is - Does it turn off completely or is it always drawing power?". So my curiosity got the best of me, and I had to find out.
Upon opening up the unit (first prying off the front cover and then removing the four screws), I was very pleased with the quality of the build. The unit uses a Li-Ion, 1500mAh battery for power. To determine the 'off' current draw, I pulled out my "BattLab-One Battery Life Optimizer" to stand-in for the unit's battery. First I needed to construct a cable to connect the BattLab module in place of the TC2 battery. Using the BattLab module, I was then able to measure the current draw in "off" and "on" modes.
I then configured the BattLab device and ran both "on" and "off' data captures:
The top trace (Sleep Current Profile) is the current draw while the unit is "Off", so obviously the TC2 does not completely power down. It does however sleep pretty deeply, awaking about every 300mS to determine if it needs to go to "On" mode. The average sleep current is 21.51 μA, which with a 1500mAh battery should provide a shelve life of ~69735 hours ( 2905 days ). So not too bad. At least not as bad as dougw experience with the TC1 (requiring him to a add an actual power switch).
The lower trace (Active Event Profile) is the current draw while the unit is "On". During this measurement, I pressed the 'Test/Hold" button to initiate three test cycles (noticeable as a current peak of ~20mA followed by a smaller peak about a second later. This amount of current draw does match my experience with this module during my review, as it needed a recharge (from a fully charged battery) during the course of the review.
Now I had better get to putting my TC2 back together before I damage anything or lose any of the screws.
Thanks for reading along!
Top Comments