Power management: battery & sleep

The ATS Mini runs on a small rechargeable battery, and a few settings help it last longer between charges. (If yours drains even while switched off, that is a known hardware quirk of early V3 boards, not a setting; see receiver versions.)

Battery level

The radio shows its battery state on screen, and the app reports the battery voltage in the status panel. One quirk: while the radio is charging on full, the voltage reading is not shown. The radio indicates charging with its own light instead.

Sleep

To save power, the radio can blank its display after a period of inactivity, and you can put it to sleep or wake it from the app (the Sleep on and off controls). Deeper sleep modes switch more off and draw less current, useful when you want the radio to keep running quietly on battery for a long session.

There is a reception benefit too. The display and its backlight radiate a small amount of electrical noise into the receiver, so turning the screen off can lower the noise floor and make a weak signal a little easier to hear.

Why a sleeping screen matters in the app

When the screen is asleep, the radio is not drawing anything to capture, so screenshots will not work until you wake it. The app knows this and avoids trying, so a sleeping radio cannot jam things up.