Idle Power Measurements

[Cranium]

Have you ever wondered how much the Ninebot uses in low power modes?  I have!  So I made up a connector, hooked up my bench power supply and did some measurements!

Equipment used:

• RIGOL DP832 DC power supply.  This is accurate down to 0.001 Amp ±0.01%
• Mastech HY3005F-3 DC power supply 
• Fluke 87V multimeter.  
• Ninebot One P using version 1.3.1 board (same as some of the E+ boards)

The power supply is running is series mode so the voltages on the power supply in the picture have to be added together.  So the total voltage I'm able to get is just over 60V.  Not perfect but it will do just fine.   

This is my test setup.  Power supply directly to the Ninebot One P using high quality silicone leads I made up for this test to minimize voltage drop from the leads.

First test was to see if there was any current being drawn while the Ninebot is powered off.  There is none.

Next test was Ninebot powered on with green LEDs on the light rings and no load on the motor.  115mA

Next test was to put the Ninebot in locked mode.  Only 28mA!  This was much better than I expected!  This means you could safely leave the Ninebot in locked mode all day with very little drain on the battery. (1.68W which equates to about 0.5% of the battery capacity per hour)

Next test was to measure the maximum current used by the LEDs while sitting idle.  To determine the max, I set the light mode to Breathing with the color being white.  This was hard to measure using the Rigol Power Supply due to the slow refresh rate of the LCD screen.  So for this test I swapped down to my Mastech power supply with the Fluke in series being used for more accurate current measurement than the Mastech can supply.  The results fluctuated up to about 185mA at its peak and with the LEDs turned off, it was 75mA.  There are 9 LEDs in each strip, 2 strips in each ring and 2 rings for a total of 36 LEDs.  At max power this many LEDs are rated to draw 11.4 Watts.  The Ninebot is using at most 100mA or 6.6 Watts of power so they are being very conservative and these LEDs could actually be brighter than they are!

Reference for power consumption: https://www.adafruit.com/products/1376

That's all for now.  Hope you were able to get something out of this.  If you have any other low power measurements you would like to see, let me know.  I could also test my E+ that has a version 1.3 board (black PCB) if there is interest but I suspect the power draw will be pretty much the same.  My biggest curiosity was the locked mode power drain because if I have it at work, I want to leave in in locked mode in case someone picks it up when I'm not around to play with it.  I was also curious about the LED power draw since they don't seem that bright to me and my suspicion about them not using max power was confirmed.

 

[musk]

Impressive!

Are the LED's able to be made brighter with a user modification?  I'm no electrician, so maybe this is an absurd question.

 

[Cranium]

7 hours ago, musk said:

Impressive!

Are the LED's able to be made brighter with a user modification?  I'm no electrician, so maybe this is an absurd question.

 

Unfortunately, no.  Ninebot could potentially increase the power through a firmware update though.  

The control board uses a LM2596-50 Buck step down converter to get 5V which would power the lights as well as the other IC's on the board.  This converter is capable of 3A or 15W of power so it could be a limitation of design.

 

[Rotator]

Several month ago, I put a rear light (same led chips as internal rings but it is a high density strip, 144 leds per meter) in parallel with the rear rings. I have did some measurements and then I decided to disconnect the internal rear rings and keep the rear lights connected.

I put an amperimeter in series with one original strip and check several modes and colors. Now I do not remember which mode (I believe it was breathing), but I wrote down the maximum current drawn and it was 257ma at white color (188ma with green). So maximum current used must be about 1 amp for the four rings. Since the power is 5V it is 5W of power.

[9bots]

Wait, I thought per strip got 10 LEDs? And one more thing, my ninebot one e+ can't have white colour for the LEDs. Or ninebot one p actually use a different LED strips than the others? 

[Rotator]

26 minutes ago, 9bots said:

Wait, I thought per strip got 10 LEDs? And one more thing, my ninebot one e+ can't have white colour for the LEDs. Or ninebot one p actually use a different LED strips than the others? 

Yes, 10 leds per strip if I am not wrong.

You can choose any colour for the rings in Ninebot E.

[Rotator]

On 24 de diciembre de 2015 at 5:02 PM, Cranium said:

Unfortunately, no.  Ninebot could potentially increase the power through a firmware update though.  

The control board uses a LM2596-50 Buck step down converter to get 5V which would power the lights as well as the other IC's on the board.  This converter is capable of 3A or 15W of power so it could be a limitation of design.

 

Moreover, this converter has not a heatsink.

I think that could supply 1.5amps max. since to draw 3A you will need a heatsink or a fan.

So I would be very carefully when thinking about draining power from this point. (Some people uses this to get power for a front light, more lights color effects, etc...)