This passed through my email. If you don't know GroupGets it's a sort of curated Kickstarter. It serves the research community and has really good projects on offer.

This one might be helpful for anyone designing for battery power. I am seriously tempted to back it though it is overkill for the battery power documentation project I am working on...



https://groupgets.com/active_campaigns/932-battlab-one

 

Interesting project for the cost.

There are a few alternatives with higher sampling rate and wider dynamic range such as the Joulescope - costing significantly more, however.

I have experience with TI's EnergyTrace and its faster HDR variant, which is excellent to measure fast transients but its GUI is tied to the Code Composer Studio IDE (although there is a nifty command line utility that exports to .csv)

 

Yes, the low cost is interesting.

 

Interesting, but is there really a need for a dedicated device with such a limited output? In the past I've used a small board with a voltage & current sensor, eg INA260 et al, to monitor a new project initially off a bench supply (mine was too old to do its own monitoring) and then off batteries. But currently I use a programmable bench supply and the test board with a old laptop to provide control (battery emulation) and monitoring across a much wider range of voltages and currents (30v/10A). Having said that, at $81 its not that expensive recognising its limitations.

 

Yes, the low cost is interesting.

Indeed it is, and it is a well put together standalone solution with fully isolated USB. It should be perfectly fine for battery monitoring.

The only aspect I am not so sure is about the sampling rate measuring burst communications such as the ESP8266 as mentioned on their page. In my experience with the EnergyTrace, its standard 2kSPS misses a lot of transmission bursts, especially when using BLE or other low energy RF boards. The more featured variant EnergyTrace HDR with its 256kSPS and 400mA easily captures those bursts and is available even on certain Launchpads like this one.

Anyways, I would love to have approval from the ministry of financial affairs (spouse) to play with one of these...