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Hello All,

I am currently working on my fifth RPi/Direwolf APRS installation, and have ran into an issue which has me stumped and hoping someone in the group has an answer for, or at least,?can give me a kick in the right direction.

First of all, some background:
The latest APRS station will primarily be used to send back weather & telemetry on the vitals of one of our local clubs VHF voice repeaters. The repeater is solar powered and located in an EXTREMELY remote mountain in the far north of Canada, thus, during winter months,?(the shortest days of the year in late December, the site gets slightly more than 7 hours of sunlight a day), so the power budget is VERY tight (not to mention the financial budget our clubs 'Minister of Finance':-)) At the same time temperatures regularly drop at the site to -40 C (yes, that's also -40 F for you folks south of the border), which also drastically reduces battery capacity! (Don't think the battery folks ever tested their battery CCA's at our temperatures :-)). Operating the RPi at these temperatures doesn't seem to be an issue. We have one station that has seen these temperatures on several occasions and is still humming away. Moisture on the other hand is a different story... Elmer Tip from years of?experience in this environment: If you expect extremely low temps, seal up & insulate your electronics,?but before you do,?toss in?a few Silica Gel packs to suck up the moisture?and prevent frost forming on the electronics & shorting it out.

I have already taken care of all the usual paths of power conservation (right down to turning off the LED on the Pi Zero to save that extra 5 mA), but had another idea that would help conserve more power at the most crucial times, but I'm not quite sure how to tackle it.

One of the previous APRS stations I built was a mobile with GPS module using the SMARTBEACON/TBEACON. Worked great but got me thinking,?"Would it be possible to do the same type of ?Tx interval variations using the CBEACON?"

For Example: With GPS SMARTBEACON the Tx interval can be varied based on the speed travelling (faster...more packets, slower...less packets).?Might it also be possible to?send a CBEACON in the same manner, ie. based on temperature readings taken from a temp sensor on the batteries? (Higher temperature...more packets, lower temperature...less packets).?Guess you could call it a SMARTCBEACON?

I've read through the Direwolf manual, scanned the group and searched for any similar solutions, but nothing?showing up.

Has anyone out there done anything similar or have any thoughts on how it may be done? Any help, suggestions would be most appreciated!

73,
DE VO2GO
Glen