3.2
Calculation of deployment endurance
An excel spreadsheet is provided on the website to help with the calculation of deployment times
for differing deployment parameters. The spreadsheet provides deployment estimates, as well as
identifying one of three possible deployment constraints: battery capacity, memory capacity, or file
count. While the first two are obvious, the file count constraint requires explanation.
The file system used by SoundTrap currently has a minimum file size of 4 MB. When using periodic
recording, if the programmed ‘record for a period of’ period is very short, the resultant file may be
smaller than the minimum file size. This will result in inefficient usage of memory, and the
deployment may be artificially memory limited. For example, a SoundTrap ST600 has 256 GB of
memory; dividing this by the minimum file size of 4 MB gives a maximum of 64000 files.
This limitation becomes an issue when using low sample rates in combination with X3 compression.
By experimenting with the periodic recording parameters in the deployment spreadsheet it will
become clear how to best avoid this limitation.
