Current consumption difference nRF51422 and nRF51822

[Bart de Kramer]

I'm had develloped some software and tested it on the nRF51-DK. After that I made my own PCB design where only the nRF51422 is replaced by a nRF51822. When I flash both with exactly the same software, the nRF51-DK consumes about 5.6uA and my own PCB about 2350uA. Is there a difference between the nRF51422 and nRF51822 which can cause this big difference?

I'm using softdevice s110_nrf51_8.0.0.

[Hung Bui]

Hi Bart,

Thank you, and Happy New Year to you too.

The 2 test cases without softdevice showed the expected result => no issue with the chip or other peripheral on board. The test with softdevice showing 2mA during idle is pretty strange, have you made sure you power reset the chip after flashing ?

The chip will enter debug mode after flashing and can consume more power. ( it should be around 30uA average current consumption with 2-3 uA when in sleep mode - idle)

You can test if the radio cause the exceed power by removing the advertising_start() function, so that there is no RF activity but with the softdevice active.

Note that you should test with SDK v6.x (and S110 v7.0), SDK v7 and above were not tested with Revision 2 chip (only revision 3).