Estimate Energy Usage with the Desktop Configurator - SM5

Song Meter SM5 User Guide
Core Product
SM5
Accessory

The desktop configurator can estimate cumulative energy use over the course of your schedule based on your programmed settings. This is particularly useful for planning deployments using an external battery, third-party solar panel, or the Wildlife Acoustics Power Kit.

About this task

If you plan to deploy the SM5 using an external battery, you will need to determine how much energy the recorder will use over the course of your deployment period and choose a battery with a capacity greater than that estimate. If you plan to power the SM5 with the Wildlife Acoustics Power Kit or a third-party solar panel, you will need to determine how much energy the recorder will use each day and ensure the solar panel can recuperate at least that amount of energy per day, on average.

Based on your settings and schedule, the Desktop Configurator allows you to estimate the expected battery life for common types of internal batteries or any internal or external battery with a known energy capacity. You can also estimate the SM5's daily energy usage in order to plan a solar-powered deployment.

Note: The Song Meter Configurator mobile app can also be used to estimate card usage and battery life D alkaline, D NiMH, and 18650 lithium-ion batteries. However, it is not suited for external batteries or solar panels. See Estimate Battery Life and SD Card Usage Using the Song Meter Configurator App.

It is vitally important to understand the factors that will affect the SM5's battery life beyond what the configurator can predict:

Battery performance
In real-world use, even high-quality batteries may slightly under-perform compared to their nominal specifications. Lower-capacity batteries or rechargeable batteries that have been used and recharged many times will run out of power even more quickly.
SD card power consumption
Battery life estimations are based on power draw we measured using three different SD cards purchased in 2025. Different SD cards draw varying amounts of power, which can have a noticeable impact on the SM5's overall power consumption and battery life. As a general trend, cards with higher capacities and faster performance tend to draw more power than cards with smaller capacities and slower performance.
Temperature
Battery life estimations assume typical battery performance in room temperature, but most types of batteries perform significantly worse in near-freezing temperatures. In cold weather, you should expect a significantly shorter battery life than what the app predicts.

Procedure

  1. Install latest version of the SM5/SM5BAT Desktop Configurator and open it.
  2. In the Deployment Scenario panel, select the Song Meter Model you want to program.
    We will return to rest of the Deployment Scenario parameters in a later step.
  3. Configure the Settings and Schedule panels to match your anticipated deployment.
    Make sure you scroll down and configure all entries in the Settings panel. For schedules based on sunrise and sunset, Location and Time Zone settings will directly affect how many hours the SM5 records each day. The GPS mode setting can dramatically increase power consumption in Continuous mode.
  4. Adjust the Deployment Scenario parameters to match your planned deployment.
    1. Set the Simulation Start date to when you plan to deploy the SM5.
      Because daylight hours shift throughout the year, your daily recording hours and expected energy consumption may depend on the deployment start date.
    2. If you are planning a solar-powered deployment, set the Simulation Start time to 00:00:00.
      This will simplify the process of estimating daily energy use.
    3. Select the SD Cards you plan to use in each of the SM5's slots.
      The configurator does not factor SD card size into its estimations of power consumption, but you can check whether the SD cards are expected to fill up before or after battery life is depleted.
    4. Select whether your SM5 has Stub microphones and/or External microphones installed.
      Stub microphones and external microphones slightly increase energy usage, even if they are not used for recording.
    5. Set Batteries to match the type of power source you will use for your deployment.
    • For internal batteries, select the type and quantity from the dropdown menu. This will fill in the typical energy capacity, in watt-hours, for high-quality batteries of each type.
    • For external batteries without a solar panel, enter the battery's expected energy capacity, in watt-hours (Wh). Note that the effective energy capacity is often less than the product of nominal voltage (V) and charge capacity (Ah).
      Enter a custom energy capacity into the text field next to the Batteries dropdown menu.
    • For solar-powered deployments, select Solar (unlimited).
  5. For internal batteries, or external batteries without a solar panel, scroll through the calendar view until you find red schedule blocks, indicating dead batteries.

    In this example, schedule blocks show blue ultrasonic recording periods until day 117, when the blocks switch to red just before 22:00.
    In the above example, red schedule blocks begin on the evening of day 117. There are no purple schedule blocks, meaning the configurator estimates that the SD cards will not fill up before the batteries die.

The following steps apply only to deployments using the Wildlife Acoustics Power Kit or third-party solar panels. You will need to determine the SM5's average daily energy usage and compare that to the energy that your solar panel can recuperate each day.

  1. Position your mouse cursor over a recording period in the calendar panel.
    Text at the bottom-left corner of the window will display the energy consumed from the beginning of the simulated schedule until that point, in Watt-hours (Wh).
    For example, the text may read 2026-Mar-26 10:53:00 (01:00:00) 3.8Wh Cards:5.7G(17) [rise 06:53 set 19:19]. The text "3.8Wh" means the recorder is predicted to have consumed 3.8 Watt-hours of energy from the beginning of the schedule until the point in the schedule where the mouse cursor is hovering.
  2. Scroll the calendar to the last date of your planned deployment, and position the mouse cursor over the right-most edge of the last recording period in that day.
    The energy consumption in the bottom-left corner is the total estimated energy consumption over the length of the full deployment.
    If the last recording period is displayed in dark purple, it means your SD cards are predicted to have filled up before the end of your deployment. Increase the size of the SD cards and check the energy consumption again.
  3. Divide the total estimated energy consumption by the total number of schedule days to determine the average estimated energy consumption.
    Tip: The numbers in parentheses along the left edge of the calendar count the schedule days, beginning with 0. Add 1 to the day count on the date you are measuring to determine the total number of schedule days.

    In this example, the mouse cursor is hovering over the last recording period on 2026-May-15 (51), and the energy usage is 155.0 W h.

    In the above example, the measured date is 2026-May-15, marked as (51). Including day 0, the total number of schedule days is 52, and the average daily energy usage is 155.0 W h / 52 days = 2.98 W h/day.

    The Wildlife Acoustics Power Kit can generate 10 watts of power in full sunlight. For this example, under ideal conditions, the Power Kit would be able to recuperate this daily energy usage with less than one hour of strong sun exposure each day. Note that other factors, including latitude, weather, and panel orientation will affect how much energy a solar panel can recuperate on average.