Power consumption for NRF52832 SoftDevice v3.0.0

[kenearl]

Hi,

My apology if this question has been answered. I wonder if >2mA current draw for an APP with the following design considered normal consumption?

1. Custom GATT profile
2. Device Information Service profile
3. Advertising at 375ms
4. Power_manage() => Verified that the device goes to lp mode since my current draw was much higher when I commented out this function.
5. 3 additional software timer enabled
6. Power cycled to get out of debugging mode
7. Compilation optimised (-O3) and "Optimise for Time"

I still have other peripherals, e.g. SPI, TWI, GPIOTE, UART, which I have disabled for now to check the base current consumption with BLE on.

[Stian Røed Hafskjold]

Hi,

No, >2mA is not normal for this application. You can check the power calculator to see what is expected: devzone.nordicsemi.com/.../ 375ms advertising with full payload should give about 39µA.

In order to debug this we need some more information.

• How are you measuring current? P22 on DK, custom board, equipment etc.
• If you can post a hex file of your project I can do some measurements here.
• Have you tried just programming a unmodified example from the SDK to see if the current consumption is looking OK?
• Have you tried to put the chip to system OFF to get the base current/DC offset?

[kenearl]

Hi Stian,

Thanks for the info and feedbacks. The power profiler is a neat tool.

Please find my reply to your questions.

1. I am measuring it via the current measurement pins on the PCA10040 DK. Just to clarify with you, since the pins connect VDD to VDD_nrf, it only measures the current consumption on the nordic MCU right? If I attach other devices on the VDD, would it affect the measurement?
2. I haven't had the chance to get to my lab but I will pass it to you asap for testing. Thanks!
3. I have not test current consumption using an unmodified example but I did put the device to system OFF to get the base current which is in uA range but I can't remember the exact value atm.