The system needs to be active from the time the last person in the household goes to bed - say midnight - until about 5am when I get up every morning in the summer time, or, 5.30 am when I get up in the winter.
On time is around 5 hours so there must be a circuit that can cope with this and consume minimum battery power.
Cockroaches are normally given the size 8 shoe, but geckos are useful creatures and eat ants and mosqitos etc. I never kill these amazing little reptiles and only want to catch them and then transport them several streets away so they can live somewhere else. Catching insects is not a problem with geckos; its their crap that they leave on their 'runs' which I consider a hygiene problem, hence my desire to catch and release them.
David HK[ Parent ]
Well, some relays use very little power, but consider a power FET which need take practically no power at all (down to nanoamps) to be held 'on' depending how you do it.
Or have the logic run on CMOS (4xxx series, good from ~3V to 18V) with a latched output to disable the power to the rest of the circuit, manually resettable. Look at something like the 4007 + pull-up resistor + P-channel power MOSFET to gate power to the rest of your system.
Microamps should cover that when inactive.
Rgds
Damon[ Parent ]
