Started running a new ADL Vantage Pro this month and having battery life issues.
I am running it with a new 35amp hr battery that is speced for the radio.
For the narrow banding I am having to run at 4800 baud rate. We are only getting about 4.5 hours of use before the battery drops below the 9 to 10 volt range and the radio starts to turn itself off.
Some testing we did to see what was going on.
At 25w power when the radio transmitted to drew 3.6amps of power. The battery shop did some calcing and said that with a 3.6amp draw a 35 amp/hr battery would only last 4.5 hours. They are suggesting going with a large battery.
I turned the power down to 16w because all the work these last few weeks have been within a few miles from the base. At 16w I still didn't make it pass 5 hrs before the raidio started turning itself off and on.
Are any of you guys having this issues. I am trying to figure out if the radio is defunc and working to hard or if I really need to go to a large battery. We ran the older PDL for a week before charging with the same type of battery.
Thanks
Lee
Earlier this month, I participated in the NSPS (formerly ACSM) Radio Hour discussing the FCC narrowbanding issue and its implications. If you're interested, you can listen to it here.
With me on the radio show were Charlie Branch from Pacific Crest and Mark Silver from Igage (a guy with lots of UHF radio experience). I passed your comments to Charlie, and he responded with the following:
--------------------------------------
If he halved his radio link rate from 9600 bps to 4800 bps, he doubled his duty cycle and this halved his battery life. The battery we sell should last around 10 hours at 50% duty cycle and 35W. I would guess he was running at 9600 bps before narrowbanding, with a 40-50% duty cycle. Going to 4800 bps means the amp is on twice as long and so the battery will drain twice as quickly.
Solutions:
1. Use Transparent FST or Trimmark 3 protocol (if all radios in the network support them) and run at 9600 bps. Or use Trimtalk 450S protocol at 8000 bps.
2. He can more than halve his duty cycle (and so more than double his battery life) by using CMRx- or ATOM-formatted corrections. All GNSS receivers in the network have to be able to read these formats, however.
3. He can also double his battery life by transmitting corrections once every other second instead of once per second - unless he is using Trimble GNSS equipment which require 1 Hz updates.
4. He can also get a larger battery but he should make sure it is one that is made for wheelchairs or golf carts or some other vehicle that doesn't use an alternator. Car batteries and some marine batteries are totally inappropriate as he will not be able to recharge them after only a few cycles. We sell Interstate DCM0035 wheelchair batteries. Interstate also makes a DCM0055 (55 AHr) battery. It costs about 55/35 more dollars, is 55/35 bigger/heavier and lasts 55/35 longer.
Lastly, he might check his data/power cable. It's pretty rare, but the cable could be damaged. There are reports of some Trimble GNSS data/power cables (P/Ns A02507 or 83352) getting hot, which sucks juice unnecessarily. If the cable is really hot, it should be replaced. If it's an A02507 or an 83352, it should be replaced with a P/N 90945-00.
------------------------------------
For the benefit of myself and others on this forum, please keep us updated on what you find.
Eric Gakstatter
GPS World magazine
[email protected]
> Started running a new ADL Vantage Pro this month and having battery life issues.
>
> I am running it with a new 35amp hr battery that is speced for the radio.
> For the narrow banding I am having to run at 4800 baud rate. We are only getting about 4.5 hours of use before the battery drops below the 9 to 10 volt range and the radio starts to turn itself off.
>
> Some testing we did to see what was going on.
> At 25w power when the radio transmitted to drew 3.6amps of power. The battery shop did some calcing and said that with a 3.6amp draw a 35 amp/hr battery would only last 4.5 hours. They are suggesting going with a large battery.
>
> I turned the power down to 16w because all the work these last few weeks have been within a few miles from the base. At 16w I still didn't make it pass 5 hrs before the raidio started turning itself off and on.
>
> Are any of you guys having this issues. I am trying to figure out if the radio is defunc and working to hard or if I really need to go to a large battery. We ran the older PDL for a week before charging with the same type of battery.
>
> Thanks
> Lee
Thanks Eric, tomorrow should be a shorter field day for me and I have plans to do some more output readings. I will let you know what I come up with.
> For the narrow banding I am having to run at 4800 baud rate.
Shouldn't this brand new narrowband radio be able to run at 9600? I don't have one, just asking?
SHG
You can run the ADL Vantage Pro or the Trimble TDL 450 at 9600 baud using the format called Trimmark 3.
TT 450s @ 9600 went away with the shift to narrowbanding.
Thank you Eric for what you said. We were told the same things by Trimble and PacCrest.
Battery Life using PC ADL Vantage Pro - Update
Yesterday afternoon finally had time to look at the different radio settings and try to come up with a combination that would work.
What I forgot in the original post was my rovers are the older hiper pros. The older hipers limit what options were available.
We could not set the hipers to use
Transparent FST
Trimmark 3
Trimtalk 450s @ 8000bps
The only setting that allowed the base radio to remain in the 12.5 kHz Channel Bandwidth and use a Radio link of 9600 bps was
Transparent EOT - 4FSK - @ 9600
Now my concern is, since I know no better I have never used the modulation type 4FSK, only the GMSK that our equipment was originally set to. I don't know if this will led to issue that I am unaware of.
Today we are going out to test the battery life and range we can get with these settings. Will report back and let you all know how the day goes.