How to Record Continuously for 3 hours in PPK2 Scope/Trigger Mode?

Hello everyone,

I am currently working on a school project in which I need to record the energy consumption (mA) of ESP32-H2s over a 190 minute period using the Nordic Power Profiler Kit II (PPK2). The ESP32-H2s operate in deep sleep and send a packet (using OpenThread) once every 30 seconds. As a result, I would like to record their energy consumption only when they are awake and sending a packet.

I don't want to use Data Logger mode, as I measuring them at 100k samples per second, and it would result in very large files that will take a long time to parse into .csv. It will take even longer afterwards too, as I will have to use a Python script to go through the CSV to calculate the average over the whole 190 minute period.

I am using Trigger/Scope mode for the PPK2. However, I cannot seem to get the Trigger/Scope mode to measure continuously for 190 minute period. Rather than recording the energy consumption every time the device wakes up, the PPK2 under Scope mode would instead record a 1 second interval in which the device woke up, sent a packet, and go back to sleep. Then when the device wakes up again, the previous 1 second interval would be overwritten by measurements for the 1 second interval that happens the next time the device wakes up.

As a result like to ask how I can get my PPK2s to record using Trigger/Scope mode for a continuous period time of 190 minutes. Or is it not possible to do this week the PPK2? In addition, I was thinking about using the unofficial PPK2 Python API, but I believe API does not yet support Trigger/Scope mode.

Any guidance, feedback, and advice on how I can use trigger mode to record device wakes for a 190 minute period, at 100k samples per second, would greatly be appreciated.

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  • Okay, bad news I'm afraid. I heard back from the devs very quickly, and here's the feedback:

    First off, since you want to measure the average current consumption over a 190 minute period, the correct way to do so would be to also measure the sleep current, as that is still a part of the average calculation, and only measuring the consumpion while awake will skew the results by quite a bit.

    A scope mode feature is not possible to use in a timed manner like this, and it is not a feature we will add any time soon I'm afraid. If you click the "select all" button, then the PPK will calculate the average current consumption of your data set in data logger mode.

    If there isn't a particular reason for the device to sleep for 30 seconds at a time, lowering this in your application code would lower the size of the data set and thus time to convert it into a CSV file and so on greatly.

    For now, the data logger will be the mode you must use. You can check out this video for some further information.

    Best regards,

    Simon

  • Hi Simon,

    Thank you very much for taking the time to help me with my situation. With your help, I now have enough information to make an informed decision on whether to use data logger or scope mode.

    Sincerely yours, 

    Simeon

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