End-user Alert Delivery (was Re: NDAA passed: Internet and Online Streaming Services Emergency Alert Study)

Thu Jan 14 03:56:48 UTC 2021

----- Original Message -----
> From: bzs at theworld.com

> On January 4, 2021 at 21:19 valdis.kletnieks at vt.edu (Valdis Klētnieks) wrote:
> > First, that means your smoke alarm batteries run down faster, which is
> > a major issue.
> 
> That's the sort of argument I label "all sign, no magnitude".
> 
> How much faster? If it took one minute of battery life off a 10 year
> battery would that be a problem? 30 minutes?

Well, let's address that.

Last time I looked, consumer residential smoke detectors were still running
off 9V alkaline batteries, which are expected to run the device for 6 months
of 1/99 duty cycle (or less, probably *way* less).

An Energizer 9v is rated for 8.4VDC in the very general vicinity of 500mAh.

> How does that compare to other factors like ambient temperature which
> also affects battery life but we mostly consider "in the noise"?

A lot.  Increasing the alert count from the 1 or 2 it probably is on most
smoke alarms to 2 or 3 a *week*, with LOUD analog speaker alert playback is
going to change that duty cycle, probably, to something like 10/90.
[ All numbers pulled out of my butt for illustration, but probably within
half an order of magnitude. ]

> Could we make the battery just a little more powerful? How much power
> would a bit of circuitry waiting for a "turn on! there's a new message
> coming in!" need?

Well, parsing for EAS on the receiver is going to make its drain non-trivial,
too, I think.

But there are "increasing the battery replacement frequency" problems *and*
"increasing the battery capacity and hence price, not to mention general 
availability" problems balancing that out.

Any way you play it, it has to be an optional model, not a general takeover 
of the field, I suspect, or the "well we just won't bother anymore" factor
takes over.

Cheers,
-- jra
-- 
Jay R. Ashworth                  Baylink                       jra at baylink.com
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