Logging sensor values over the course of days or weeks on a single battery charge is a lot easier said than done. The BLEthrowie made by Singleton Labs is a compact data logger which uses the CC2541 System-on-chip made by Texas Instruments. This tiny SOC contains an MCU and Bluetooth Low Energy. The chip itself is thankfully not too power hungry, drawing only 0.5uA in sleep mode and 18.2mA while transmitting a message via Bluetooth.
Singleton labs has not explicitly provided any use cases along with an expected battery life but they mention it being possible to log hourly for a week on a single battery charge. They don’t tell us how frequently the BLEThrowie is transmitting its sensor values via Bluetooth though which makes the information less useful. With a liberal use of low power mode and only transmitting a few times per day, it is in theory possible to get a few weeks of data logging on a single charge.
A big aspect of the usefulness of this Bluetooth sensor board is the Android/iOS apps written to go along with it. These apps are written to display graphs of sensor values stored in the BLEThrowie, meaning you don’t have to physically connect to the sensor to get your readings from it. Check out the video below from Singleton Labs.
