[maemo-developers] [maemo-developers] Re: Measuring power consumption of 770

[From: Heike C. Zimmerer]

Claudio Scordino <scordino at di.unipi.it> writes:

> If I can make the 770 work with only the battery charger (using a kind of 
> bypass instead of the battery), I could use my multimeter for electrical 
> sockets to measure the power consumption of the device...
> A multimeter for the electrical socket is cheap, and does not require to play 
> with resistors and the Ohm law.

Actually, there's much more at the mains side to be taken into account
than at the battery side - not less.  If you're going to use a cheap
energy meter for small and possibly non-resistive loads like that, you
might as well pick a few random numbers from the phone book instead.
And if you're going to measure current and think you get real power
consumption by multiplying it by the voltage, the same applies (that's
what those devices (mostly) do).

If you don't know how to measure at the battery, don't even think
about measuring at the mains power.

- Heike