Indirect measurement of the current draw of a device 2012-10-15

Sometimes we want to know the current draw of a device for various reasons. One reason would be to estimate the run time of the device when it is running on batteries. It is often very inconvenient to try to break the battery connections and insert a current meter or sense resistor, so here is an alternate method that does not require breaking the current flow.

To accomplish this, we perform a series of very simple tests and from the results we can calculate the current draw. The tests do...

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