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Comment by runholm | Hacker News Reader

Yes, the Cortex M0 chip from Nordic can last years in a low-intensity Bluetooth connection. It can spend almost all it's time in the deep sleep modes and only read some sensor and connect to the phone to keep the connection alive every second or so.

It's a very different use-case than that of the ESP8266.

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ESP8266 can the same, but Wifi.

WiFi needs way more power, so you can't run it long-term on batteries.

You most certainly can spurt WiFi for days and days .. and don't need to stay up.

I say this, because I have devices doing it in front of me. Maybe not for 'years and years', but certainly efficiently enough for long-term sensor usage.

"spurt"? (sorry, not a native speaker, can't make sense of the word in this context)

I guess it really depends on how often you have to transmit - if you have hourly checkins the world looks better than if you have to update something every minute or so.

I regularly open and close Wifi, send a 'spurt' of data, and shut down the Wifi. This is on a system with a 400mAH battery, it stays on for days and days without much fuss .. certainly BLTE and co. (where is ANT+ these days?) are lower-energy, but even if its only 'just close' in terms of energy efficiency, all the advantages of using Wifi instead of Bluetooth are huge.

Spurt: a short, sudden burst. A short spray of water from a garden hose could be a "spurt". We use the phrase "growth spurt" to describe when a child grows taller in a short time.

They're using it to describe a short, relatively large transfer of accumulated data collected while the wifi connection is deactivated, and transferred in a sudden stream when it's turned on.

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