nRF51822 current range

[ahmed]

Hi every one,

I use the nRF51822 to read temperature from sensor and send it through UART, i follow the SDK examples and just change connection interval to 0.5 sec and it works fine, in current drawn i notice it is start from 1.1 mA in nRF51822 and suddenly rise to 2 mA after 15 seconds, is this normal or not ?

Thanks

[Øyvind Karlsen]

Hi,

What are you doing these measurements with? Please see this tutorial for an intro on current measurement.

Best regards,

Øyvind

[ahmed]

Hi, I used a precise ampere meter in serial with my designed board to measure the current, is it normal to rise such like this after few seconds ?

Regards

[Øyvind Karlsen]

Which ampere meter?

It's hard to say wether this is normal or not as it depends a lot on which example you are running and the precision of your measuring equipment.

For example if you run an example that keeps the CPU active you will see currents around or above 4 mA, if you have poor resolution on your measuring equipment this can read anywhere from 1 to 10 mA.

Depending on what type of state you are in you will see some different currents,

• Sleep should be around ~100µA or less depending on what peripherals you have active
• Active is in the 4mA range again depending on the active peripherals
• Radio activity is in the range 4-10 mA depending on the output power, if you have enabeled DC-DC and so forth.

You can get a good idea of the current consumption by summing the currents for each module you plan to run, refer to the electrical specifications in the product specification.

Best regards,

Øyvind