Electronics → Question about a weather sensor ...

I've got an Acu-Rite 1010W professional weather center. I spoke with the guys who designed it, and they state that even though the weather station uses 4 AA batteries, it only uses one side of the terminals so I can run it of of 2 AA batteries if I would like to remotely mount it in a place where it's nearly impossible to change the batteries on this thing. They state it only uses 3v (2x1.5v) ... to me that doesn't make much sense since 4x1.5v = 6v. How can an electronic device only use 3v when it's being supplied 6v? If that's the case, wouldn't I be able to buy an 8xAA battery holder and run it for twice as long?

The batteries are wired in a series-parallel arrangement.

Two batteries in series, in parallel with the other two batteries that are in series

This adds up to 3 volts but gives twice the life span.

^Pic of how they wire up the cells to get that voltage.

Indeed by running the cells in the above arrangement you would get longer operating then with only two batteries (about 2x).

By adding cells on the left and right in pairs the voltage remains the same; however drain on each cell drops thereby reducing the number of times you need to replace the battery.

One caveat, most of these wireless weather devices also have a switch on the outside sensor that has to be pressed or flipped when you change batteries in order to sync the outside unit back up with the inside unit. You would change the batteries less, but you still need access to the unit.

another issue is to make sure you use batteries with the same manufacture date - using older "new" batteries with newer "new" batteries in this configuration wouldnt work so well as the older batteries would die off before the newer ones would.

Indeed, the bad ones suck the life out of the new ones; one of the reasons manufactures always state never to mix batteries.

me, i would find it easier to just run a bank of weather shielded cables lol