Fast facts:
- RF output power: ~5mw
- Transmitter Duty Cycle: <0.5%
- Samples / Minute: 2
- Estimated battery life: 5-15 years
Had an opportunity to run a few power consumption analysis tests to attempt to put solid numbers to battery life, power consumption, wireless output power, etc.
A CEEv2b2 (unreleased hardware, because that's what I have) was used, sourcing 3.0 volts and monitoring current consumption for the duration of a standard transmission, which occur approximately 2x a minute.
Multiply voltage and current to get power, normalize to milliwatts, sum and normalize to millijoules, and average multiple samples.
An average of 0.2 millijoules / transmission was observed across the data included in this repo.
At 0.4mJ / minute, fewer than 250 joules per year are used.
Depending upon battery chemistry, temperature, age, etc, a single AAA battery provides 1000 to 5000 joules, for a total of 2000 to 10000 joules per pair, offering an operational battery life conservatively in excess of five years.