Power consumption measurement of rsm4x4 RS41 radiosonde with NFW firmware (R65)

[DadoRdz]

Dear Franek,

We conducted an experiment on Jan 26th 2026. measuring the actual power consumption of the new X-series RS41 radiosonde (rsm4x4). The measurements also show that there is still an issue with correct synchronization of TX activation relative to GPS time.

The PDF report (2.7MBy) can be downloaded from the following link (active only for 7 days)
https://filesender.srce.hr/?s=download&token=70873de5-6ff0-47ef-905c-5115902a5353

Dump of the actual measurements (in Matlab .mat format) is also included in separate ZIP file (If you can't open it, I can also convert it in some .csv or textual form).
https://filesender.srce.hr/?s=download&token=33f0c8a4-6634-4d67-b825-66203bd7dbd7

Hope this will help you in optimizing NFW implementation for better battery utilization & longer flights using a single battery.

Now that I have prepared this measurement setup, I would also be able to do further measurements faster for different configurations and NFW revisions.

Best,
Dado

[Nevvman18]

Hi Dado,
This report is stunning! It provides me with a complete knowledge of the power consumption with NFW running on the RSM4x4!
I see that the scheduler code still has issues and I'm aware of the potential problems it could cause. I'm going to fix them, but I'm low on time lately.

The reported GPS time being off is a current scheduler limitation, because the GPS data gets updated periodically, and the packet is constructed and transmitted later than the obtained data says. The actual transmission interval is closer to the set value, though it still could be made better.

One thing during the measurements that could be optimised is the LED status, because the sonde turns them OFF in-flight, this won't however impact the reading by a meaningful amount.

Again thanks very much for the measurements!
Franek