I’m currently working for a personal project on battery powered wireless LAN devices which in the end should be able to automatically connect to each other within a wireless network mesh. I’m using three TP-Link TL-MR3020 routers for my experiments. They are small devices with a size of 74 x 67 x 22 mm and a weight of 58 g.
The first step was finding an adequate battery-packs as power supplies. I used four Mignon (AA) batteries in a battery-pack, connected in series, and added a self-built mini-USB connector to it. The battery packs add some extra weight: a router plus battery-pack together weights 186 g.
It looks like these TP-Link 3020 routers can last quite some time powered by these batteries. The routers are slightly oversupplied by the 5.6 Volts (when fully charged) from the eneloop batteries, but I have not yet recognized any instabilities. I measured the power consumption between of a router at its peak, under load (wireless traffic) and in idle state (with wifi turned on).
| System State | Power Consumption (ca.) |
|---|---|
| idle (wifi on, but no traffic) | 71 mA |
| normal load | 112 mA |
| peak (wifi + ethernet traffic) | 166 mA |
