Stalker power consumption - POWER_TF jumper

Products & Technology Arduino & Seeeduino
#1

Hi,

I have just been measuring the power consumption of the Stalker and trying to get it even lower in sleepmode. First I tried with the POWER_TF jumper set to VCC and measured about 600uA in sleepmode. I then swapped the POWER_TF jumper to CTL_D4 to try and cut the power to the SD card during sleep but I am still getting 600uA.

Could I ask SeeedStudio to publish a low power guide to hardware and code for Stalker please, this would explain all the options available to get the power consumption down to a minimum.

In the meantime… would it be possible to explain how to use the POWER_TF jumper in CTL_D4 mode with a code example please. I think I am right in saying that the digital pin 4 can be used to switch power on and off to the SD card power regulator U6 so setting D4 to output and Switching D4 High before writing to the SD and D4 LOW when sleeping should work… when I do this I get a much hight power consumption of 40mA?

Many thanks.

#2

I guess the follow on question is … what is the best power consumption that we can achieve with Stalker and if a code example might be provided to show how this can be realised? Thanks.

#3

Hi, Just to note that I have been running the StalkerV21_DataLogger_15Sec_NoSerialPort.pde sketch and I measure 650uA rather than the 95uA noted in the wiki - be good to know what I am doing wrong so that I can reduce the power consumption by 6 times :slight_smile: Thanks

#4

Same problem here: I also measure around 600uA in sleep mode, which is sort of ridiculous for a device supposed to be deployed in the wild. I also noticed that when changing the design from V2.1 to V2.2, you changed the two way jumpers for BEE_POWER and TF_POWER to single bridge jumpers. Note that in the later case you just burn 80-100uA (for each voltage regulator!) because of the pull up resistor of 47k.

EDIT: I am now actually down to under 300uA - but do not know what made that happen :blush: . Still, I think one could improve on that. In my other other projects I usually come down below 10uA, but they do not involve separate voltage regulators.