Frank and I have been experimenting for over a year with the ArduBat shield on an Arduino stack. In the process we decided to develop the concept a little further. First, I developed a Data Recorder Platform, or DRP, to eliminate un-needed components, reduce power usage, and provide for all the needed data logging circuits on a single board.

Next, we needed to address the ArduBat shield. We wanted to minimize power use for bat call activity logging that used unattended hardware ... over a period of many days. So, we decided to drop the push-buttons and one of the LED's from the ArduBat shield, and add a bistable latching relay that could turn the power for the bat detector circuits on and off.

Now the bat detector circuit would only be activated during the night time hours ... as programmed by the software loaded on the DRP. When the full DRP stack is operating, the power can run up to 30ma. When the bat detector circuit is turned off, and the ATMEGA processor is put into sleep mode, the power drops to less than 1ma !!