current consumption mesh

RE: current consumption mesh

andrewhamill — Thu, 01 Jan 2026 00:55:10 GMT

Is this still a limitation of the mesh stack please? If no, which example is best to look at? If yes and lower power consumption is required to send a message, say, ever 5s, is there an alternative that you can propose please? Thanks!

RE: current consumption mesh

ovrebekk — Wed, 20 Jun 2018 10:23:53 GMT

Happy to help 🙂

RE: current consumption mesh

george079 — Wed, 20 Jun 2018 05:34:58 GMT

I got it. Torbjørn Thank you .

RE: current consumption mesh

ovrebekk — Thu, 14 Jun 2018 09:11:19 GMT

Hi George

By default the nRF52840 is powered by the VDD regulator, not VDDH, which means you have to use P20 to measure current instead of P23.

Best regards
Torbjørn

RE: current consumption mesh

george079 — Wed, 13 Jun 2018 03:38:50 GMT

Hi Øvrebekk,

How do you measure the power consumption 5mA ? I refered ( Measuring current ) P23 and get the 130uA for NRF52840. mesh sdk2.0.1 server role( light_switch_server_nrf52840_xxAA_s140_6.0.0.hex ). Did I measure with wrong connector ?

RE: current consumption mesh

ovrebekk — Mon, 11 Jun 2018 11:03:02 GMT

That is correct.

To run mesh at lower power you need to use the concept of friendship, where a low power node is connected to a single friend node, allowing it to communicate at a pre-defined interval (similar to a normal BLE connection).

The Nordic mesh solution doesn't currently implement lower power or friend roles, so until this is supported the power consumption will remain around 5mA.

RE: current consumption mesh

loubaz — Fri, 08 Jun 2018 14:41:03 GMT

So, even if the relay mode is not active the power consumption will stay around 5mA ?

RE: current consumption mesh

ovrebekk — Thu, 11 Jan 2018 08:32:25 GMT

The radio is enabled all the time, even if you are not actively sending any packets, so current consumption will be around 5mA on average (more if you disable DCDC).

The Bluetooth mesh specification allows for low power nodes that don't need to keep the radio enabled all the time, but these devices will not be able to relay messages, and as such can not take part in the core mesh network. Instead they need to communicate with a single friend node, which will do the relaying for it.

We don't currently support this role in the mesh stack.

Best regards
Torbjørn Øvrebekk

RE: current consumption mesh

Matt — Wed, 10 Jan 2018 14:44:31 GMT

RF is not disabled when you want the nRF52 to "listen" for external pulse, or am I missing something here?