Just wondering if you have any power figures?,
and how to turn down the power?.
The WIO-Terminal looks fantastic and been pouring over the schematic - thanks for the open source.
So I’m looking at battery power (future solar power) for a simple logger for a customer.
The logger will makes some analog measurements every 15minutes, and can power off inbetween.
Periodically, every month, data will be taken off - possibly via uSD, or USB Flash, or whatever else I can make easily happen.
So wondering what is the power useage,
How to turn down the power - turn off RTL8720.
.
For reference, please see this post here: How do I turn off the Wio Terminal Screen to save power?
For now, we do not have much work done in power saving regarding to SAMD51. But for RTL8720, theoretically it can be turned off.
Ok good to hear on the RTL8720 and I saw that the screen can be turned off.
I was wondering what numbers you have for standalone power consumption.
I have been using the SAMD51 in another board, so I would like to know if its ball park for this board and how you are measuring it.
So it seems to me, for standalone operations, its got to be done from the 5V_USB coming from the battery pack. It is a typical characteristic that is usually specified for a board.
thanks
Here are some stats for reference:
SAMD51 power consumption while running factory firmware: 120mA
Power consumption while running Blink: 38.5mA
RTL8720 module
Standby power consumption: 70mA
WiFi RX: 72mA
WiFI TX: 282mA
BT TX; 107mA
Oh thanks hadn’t see this . Yes I got one, and plugging it in with a USB power meter I see it takes 100mA with the screens on. Interesting your BT Tx figure, I guess not BLE.
I’ve been looking at the internal powerinng/clocking on the uP, and seem that the clocking is started at a default of 48Mhz, and then turned up to 120Mhz. So 48Mhz would use less power.
So just wondering if you are going to provide specific Wio Terminal/SAMD51 modified startup files, if there would be a way of optionally keeping the startup at 48Mhz.
Seems the microchip tutorials reference E51 and E54, as variants of the same silicon.
https://microchipdeveloper.com/harmony3:same54-getting-started-training-module-step1
Nice device so far. Recommended it to a friend, and he also jumped at it.
1 Like
ansonhe97 or anybody else interested in low power, I’m wondering if any more thoughts have come up on managing power usage.
I’m plugging away at incorporating the Wio Terminal into a real world usage, and to be able to recommend it, but its a long path.
To setup and test for low power, I’ve modified the Seeed_Arduino_RTC to have a repeating alarm, and then use the .standbyMode() to reduce the power. I have turned off the RTL8720, and of course LED back light is off.
However its waking up as soon as its put into standbyMode - probably because there are some regular interrupts going.
What I had hoped was to have a simple environment with just the RTC alarm interrupt firing, and then be able to put it to sleep.
So now I need to figure, read what interrupts are pulling it out of sleep,
The current being used is 37mA.as measured at the USB
The example is at Seeed_Arduino_RTC/examples/lowpwr_samd51 at release1 · neilh10/Seeed_Arduino_RTC · GitHub
I’ve characterized a basic SAMD51 on the Express M4 LowPower using RTC on Express M4 SAMD51 - adafruit industries