I think we're definitely on to something here.
I closed down both Skype and my company VoIP phone client last night (both of which have access to USB headset and camera) and, lo and behold, for almost the first time ever I had sleep study show "all green" in terms of activity (no xHCI hub and just a few things active for around 5% of the time). I also had a large bar in the 32s part of the DRIPS graph (which is normally completely blank).
What is also interesting is that during this session, I didn't actually lose that much less power than in the previous session where the xHCI device was active - I had a discharge rate of 940mW compared to 1031mW the previous day. I think this tends to tell me that (in my case)
- closing these comms devices does help
- my device has actually settled down since I started this thread so that even with the xHCI active, I don't lose more than around 10% per 4 hour standby period.