GPS tracker has mainly 2 types talking of installations: hardwired GPS tracker and wireless GPS tracker. Wired GPS Tracker is connected with the car or vehicle battery for direct and continuous power supply. Wireless GPS tracker works on their own backup battery. The battery size is from 500 mAh to 20,000mAh. GPS tracker without wire is widely used in wireless car tracker, personal tracker and pet tracking devices.

How to calculate GPS Tracker battery life?

The formula is: H= mAH/mA

H here mans the battery life, unit is hours.

mAH is the battery capacity.

mA is working current of the GPS tracker

How long can a backup battery of a GPS tracker last?

Here we take 2G GPS tracking device as example, since 3G, and 4G module consumes more power.

First, check the battery capacity.

Most wireless car / personal and pet tracking device uses Li-ion or Li-polymer battery. Vehicle and big animal tracking device batteries range from 800 to 20,000mAh. Personal and small pet tracker batteries range from 400 to 1000mAh. 3-year battery life GPS tracker uses a non-rechargeable disposable LMO battery with 4000 to 5000mAh capacity. The size of the battery is generally proportional to the capacity. So in the case of the same current, the larger the battery, the longer the use time.

Second, check the GPS tracker working current

Working current is not easy to confirm. Here are several cases, in a nutshell:

Sleep current when stationary

GPS and GSM ON current

GSM ON current

GSM and WIFI ON current

Here we mainly analyze the most common sleep current and GSM+GPS fully working current.

Sleep current has a great matter in the engineering and components of tracing devices, mainly 2 types:

1. Wireless vehicle tracking device: MCU+2G GSM module+GPS module
2. Personal or pet GPS tracker: 2G GSM chip+ GPS chip (mainly MTK6261, MTk2503 GSM chips)

Wireless vehicle GPS tracker for ultra-long standby mostly uses STMicroelectronics’ STM8 series of low-power microcontrollers, which are the most power-efficient in the sleep state. The overall standby current can be about 10uA (the poor products have 50uA). In order to save power, the machine with long standby time is generally only turned on once a day for about 3 minutes each time, and then all the GSM+GPS+WIFI are turned off.

For personal positioning products, the quiescent current is generally 3-5mA.

There are also many situations when GSM+GPS is turned on. When the GMS signal is not good, the current will increase many times, so the current cannot be accurately evaluated in this situation. At the normal signal situation, the average current is 60- 80mA (some manufacturers have poor product design, more than 100mA is the norm), for the convenience of calculation, it is calculated as 60mA.

Third, Check GPS and GSM ON frequency

▲If need to see detailed history location traces, the GPRS reporting interval is set to 1 minute normally. In this case, it is also divided into whether the device is moving or stationary. When moving, the basic GSM and GPS will not be turned off or enter the power-saving mode, which is calculated as 60mA. . When it is still, GPS is generally turned off, and GSM is also in a power-saving state. It is only necessary to maintain the heartbeat connection, and the current is generally around 5mA. In order to simplify the calculation, we all calculate according to the constant motion. So the average current is 60mA.

▲It is also common to report once every 10 minutes. The ultra-long standby time is calculated as 3 minutes each time the power is turned on (because the MCU powers off the module and then turns it on again, basically every time the ephemeris needs to be downloaded again, so it takes a long time), personal positioning us According to each working state for 1 minute (Ephemeris is valid, GPS is valid, GPRS reporting is completed), on average, the ultra-long standby GPS is about 18mA, and the average current of personal positioning GPS is about 10.5mA.

▲If the location is reported once an hour, the average current is very small, because within an hour, it only takes about 3 minutes to run at 60mA, and the remaining 57 minutes are in power-saving mode (about 10uA for ultra-long standby, personal positioning At around 5mA), so the average current of the ultra-long standby machine is 3mA, and the average current of the personal positioning machine is about 7.5mA.

▲According to the report once a day, the average current of ultra-long standby is about 0.15mA (because the 10uA time is long during sleep, the average current is small after 24 hours), and the average current of personal positioning products is more than 5mA, calculated as 5.5mA.

The following diagram uses relatively easy-to-understand and common data. When GPS+GSM is turned on, it is calculated as 60mA, when it is sleeping, it is 5mA (personal positioning GPS), 10uA (ultra-long standby positioning GPS), and the battery is calculated at 1500mA. , the device is always in motion. Per below diagram, you can have a clear idea of GPS tracker battery life.

Battery 1500mAh	Per 1 minute	Per 10 mins	Per 1 hour	Per 24hours
Car GPS tracker	25 hrs (60mA)	83 hrs (18mA)	500 hrs (3mA)	416 days (0.15mA)
Personal GPS Tracker	25 hrs (60mA)	142 hrs (10.5mA)	200 hrs (7.5mA)	11 days (5.5mA)