Beacon Battery Management & Monitoring | Marvelmind

0:01 Hello, colleagues. Today we received just another basic question, and we would like to address it. The question you can see—basically, the question is about charging: how to monitor the charging, how to monitor their battery voltage, and how to know when their beacons are charged. Now, first of all, remember that when you are getting the beacons—for example, in my case, Super-Beacon—we often ship it with DIP switch in off position. So check the operating manual and move the power to the on position. Otherwise, the beacons are still off. For Mini-RX, you need actually to open the cover to the Mini-RX, switch it on once, and then close it and never touch it again. This DIP switch you shouldn't switch on and off. No, we use it only when we store it on the shelf or ship it for a long time.

0:59 Otherwise, as soon as you get it, don't mess with it. Switch it on once, and then the beacons will go automatically to sleep mode if they are not USB connected or if there is no radio coverage with the modem. So switch it on once—but don't forget to switch it on. Yes, the recommendation is very simple: charge it when you get it. Charge it one to two hours. Usually, the beacons are pre-charged about halfway, so one to two hours would be enough. When the beacons are charged or being charged, you see the red indicator. The first question is: indicator charge level? Yes, there is an indicator of charge level. And when the beacon becomes not red or dark, it means that it's fully charged. But how does the system work? There's a charger inside, so it means that when it's charging, it's showing red. But then it will switch off at some time, but then the voltage drops a bit and then switches on, and it will keep doing this all the time.

1:58 So it means that if, for example, you put the charging, you come after two hours, it can be fully charged, but it will be—it may still be red simply because you already missed the time when it was dark. So it will be red, dark, red, dark, red, dark. Okay, but how do you know what's the voltage? It's very, very simple. So you either connect it over the USB to the Dashboard and see this. So in the Dashboard, you can see the voltage. So currently, this beacon is heavily undercharged, and you see the minimum charge with the 3.5 volts. When it's already cutting off, this is still below. So the recommended voltage is between 3.6 to 4.2. It will not charge more than that because your charge controller—but if the voltage is below 3.6, it will start blinking, showing yellow stuff. And below 3.5 volts, it will try to shut down to preserve the battery.

2:56 So the basic go-to is their—to the Dashboard. Connect it over the USB and see the current voltage. You can do the same over radio. So when your beacon is radio connected to the Modem, you can see the same value over the Modem. So it means that if you, for example, deploy it or whether you're building—I don't know—200 beacons, you can check each of them one by one for the voltage. When the voltages are low in this field, their messages failed. You will see also messages like "Beacon—and whatever—100 is a low voltage" or something. Anyway, so there will be a red message. Read those messages, please, and follow. Thank you very much.