Automating the measurement of current consumption of an embedded system
Dedicated, low cost current shunt monitor ICs such as the INA195 or INA198 would allow low cost, low perturbation current measurement direct to an ADC input of a microcontroller for your purpose. 

A typical schematic and overview is provided here. 

The INA195/198 has a 100V/V gain and common mode voltage of -16 to +80 volts. Thus a low value shunt resistor such as 0.1 Ohm would provide 1 volt full-scale sense voltage at 100 mA peak current. If your device-under-test typically works in a 10 mA range, then a 1 Ohm shunt resistor would provide the same 1 volt scale.

High common mode voltage allows you to design for a separate power source for your sensing application if desired, so as to not load the system under test and skew the results.

The device output voltage is ground-referenced, hence effectively independent of the actual Vcc of the system under test. This permits a current sense and logging device to be built, that would have two connectors, "from battery" and "to device", and be portable to future test targets which work at very different voltages if needed.