"Dave Plowman (News)" wrote:
In article ,
Huge wrote:
IIRC, the problem was that an alarm system was drawing a heavy current.

Not just an alarm. I never managed to measure the current, since the
inrush current upon connecting the battery blew the 2 amp fuse in my
ammeter.

On my SD1, connecting the battery operates the central locking. So to find
out the true quiescent current, use a jumper in parallel with the DVM (ie
short it out) in ammeter mode until things have stabilised then remove it.

FWIW, I found the central locking to be a major culprit - drawing about 30
mA all the time. Thank you Lucas. So I made a new controller using CMOS
7555 timers which got it down to 0.018 mA.

A drain of 30mA is hardly worth worrying about is it? I doubt if it
makes much difference when compared with the inherent self discharge
rate of the battery. If you have a (say) 50Ah battery a 30mA
discharge will take something like two months to discharge it.

I suppose that's a bit faster than self discharge, but not much.

--
Chris Green