Hello,

I was sending a pallet halfway around the world and decided it would be nice to put a GPS tracker in as a bit of an insurance policy.
I’ve got the Vodafone Curve which quotes a seven day battery life when it’s on the power saving mode (2 hourly location reports).
My pallet will take about two months to get there so that wasn’t going to cut it.
My first idea was to use a power bank, but those do seem to automatically turn off once charging is complete so that was no good. I needed something dumb.
So I bought a USB socket, and a battery pack for four AA batteries. Put fully charged 2000mAh batteries in and hooked it all up.
Now the Curve weighs 30g. If we estimate half that weight being the battery, 500mAh seems like a likely capacity. Maybe as much as 700-800mAh but doesn’t seem likely to be much more.
Based on this, i figured worst case i’d get 3 weeks, best case 6-7 weeks.
4 days in now - its almost dead.
So it’s drained even faster than the quoted 7 days. I can’t get my head around that. Any idea what I did wrong?

 

What are the documented power requirements for the GPS tracker?

 

4 days in now - its almost dead.

Do you know what the Curve original battery voltage Is?

Define "almost dead".
What is the AA battery pack voltage at that point?

 

Hi,

I wasn’t able to find any details on the battery of the device, it it charges via a usb cable so assumed 5V.

it stayed at 100% for 2-3 days as expected, then before I knew it, it was at 9%. Then i’ve had occasional notifications to say it was on charge, but it’s not dropped to 5% and not charging. It’s been in the same warehouse for a couple of days now so I wondering if it just happens to be in a really cold room and that is affecting it.
the rechargeable batteries I put in the pack are NiMH,rated 2000 mAh, around 2 years old maybe had 5 cycles in that time and always stored at room tempterature. I gather they should still be pretty decent.

 

One more snippet of info, I just spoke to somebody at Vodafone and they told me it’s 5V, 458mAh and lithium ion in the Curve.

 

I just spoke to somebody at Vodafone and they told me it’s 5V, 458mAh and lithium ion in the Curve.

Then I don't see why your AA's didn't work, unless they weren't fully-charged, or are defective.