In my experience building battery powered devices over the past few years, I have realized the process of measuring and estimating battery life can be very labor-intensive. The process is tedious, with multiple test equipment arrangements to capture current profiles for different firmware states, manual data logging, and spreadsheets for data input and calculations to get to an estimate of battery life for my device under test (DUT).
I needed a better way, which led me to build the BattLab-One (Battery Laboratory). My goal was to deliver a design tool that quickly and effortlessly provided an estimate of battery life for my projects, enabling me to spend more time on design optimization and less time on measuring and calculating battery life.
I went through several iterations on the breadboard – I finally decided on the Texas Instruments INA233 for my current sensor.