Nothing to do with uC: measuring parasitic draw from car battery

Author	Message
JohnS Guru Joined: 18/11/2011 Location: United Kingdom Posts: 4345	Posted: 08:28am 16 Aug 2024       Tom, Many (most?) cars nowadays shut down over a period of time (when working right), but that time will restart if you disconnect the power. You can instead measure the tiny voltage drop across each fuse. You wait for the shut down, having defeated any door/boot/bonnet locks so you can get at fuses with your meter without waking the modules up. Look at the top of a fuse - you can probe those tiny metal bits. If current is flowing there will be a tiny (mV) voltage drop across the fuse because a fuse is a small value resistor (it wouldn't blow otherwise). There are videos etc about this online if you like them. You can try it with the car awake, so you're bound to have current flowing, to get used to probing. John Edited 2024-08-16 18:29 by JohnS