Hi,

I'm interested in minimizing power consumption of my unit and note the LCD back light is continually lit when fed external power. Short of opening up the unit and disabling the drive, is there any other way of doing this?

I need to do this because the plan is to supply the unit from an external 12 volt source (solar power) and the light is not needed. As the logger is sampling every second for wind gust there is no period that the instrument can be put to sleep.

On another issue is it possible for the DT80 to start up automatically and continue to sample/log without user intervention after a power outage? If so how do I do this please?

Thanks for your help,
Bill

Good morning Bill,

The back light issue is in the list of things to be done, we just haven't got to it yet.

Send the program to the logger then run the command RUNJOBONREST"Fred"
where Fred is the name of your Job. In DeLogger4 when you send the program to the DT80 use the "Send program to connection and save as RESET job"

Cheers,
Roger

Up to now the only way is to de-solder pin 15 from display module in order to turn the light off. We had also the same problem - it was crucial to limit the power consumption at the cost of loosing warranty on the display module!!

Good luck

There is a work around for the display back light and reducing power consumption by using parameter P16. dataTaker haven't documented this feature, as I believe it is primarily for production testing.

Normal setting is P16=0, this is the setting of normal operation of all LEDs and the display back light. Low Power setting is P16=32 which turns off all LED and back-light activity completely.

The logger and display function normally, but all LED activity including indication of sampling etc are suppressed. It doesn't matter is nobody is there to look and it saves a fair chunk of power.

Adding appropriate commands to the immediate schedule ensures low power is the default after reset. If you want to manually change out of and into low power mode, use FUNCTION commands via the Keypad Function operation.

Example;

BEGIN"Low_Pwr"
P16=32
FUNCTION1="Low PWR"{P16=32}
FUNCTION2="Normal PWR"{P16=0}
'insert normal DT80 schedules and settings.
END    'End of program

Supermono

Excellent A+++!!!
The top should be having the chance to control LEDs and display back light separately...DATATAKER takes note!

Bye