Premier Farnell has created an IoT Power Calculator that helps developers of IoT (Internet of Things) projects understand the expected battery life of IoT devices and experiment with different strategies to determine their impact on battery life.

Users enter basic parameters about their hardware – including different types of microcontroller and batteries – and their software (how frequently the software wakes, and how many cycles the data capture/processing and communications operations require). The calculator uses these inputs to work out the power consumption.

The result is a fast and convenient way to quickly estimate battery life for an IoT application: something that was previously difficult and time consuming, involving either the creation of a spreadsheet or manual calculations of battery life.

The calculator is available from Premier Farnell’s “Internet of Things Hub”: a one-stop web portal which includes news, views, articles and tools relating to IoT applications, including an article explaining the calculator and factors that impact battery life in IoT applications.