NRF51 current abrupt change

RE: NRF51 current abrupt change

Stian Røed Hafskjold — Thu, 08 Feb 2018 11:42:34 GMT

I can see that the IDLE current is fine. About 4 µA. The reason for the 30µA is an app-timer or similar that is waking the chip up every 30 ms. Also, you calibrate every 250ms which is more than necessary. 4 seconds should be fine if the temperature is stable.

The chip never enters the 1.1mA consumption here. I'm pretty sure this is the chip accidentally entering debug mode. There's an issue with this on the nRF51 and we recommend to put an extra pull down resistor on SWDCLK.

RE: NRF51 current abrupt change

liu — Wed, 07 Feb 2018 02:31:50 GMT

hello,

Thanks for your help.This is my hex file with S110.devzone.nordicsemi.com/.../6406.nrf51422_5F00_xxac_5F00_s110.hex

RE: NRF51 current abrupt change

Stian Røed Hafskjold — Tue, 06 Feb 2018 11:33:02 GMT

Are you using GPIOTE IN event for the g-sensor interrupt pin? This consumes current in idle mode. You should configure to use GPIO PORT event.

For the 1.1mA I suspect that the chip enter debug mode. Please see Kenneth's answer in this one: https://devzone.nordicsemi.com/f/nordic-q-a/16530/issue-with-nrf51-unexpectedly-entering-debug-mode

You can also post a hex file if you want. Then I can do some measurements here.

RE: NRF51 current abrupt change

liu — Tue, 23 Jan 2018 15:05:44 GMT

hello, I use a beacon program of S130. But i add some peripheral, RTC,SPI,USART. When the beacon works, i put a ammeter in whole circuit. At this time the current is 330uA. Later, i shut down advertising,USART and SPI, let RTC wake beacon to adv every 15min.Meanwhile, a int pin connects to G-sensor can wake the beacon also. But now i find two error. The first is current when i shut the adv is 30uA, i think it shoule be less than 10uA because i have shut down all peripheral not used and set gpio not used to output and high.I used the chip in DCDC mode. The second trouble is current abrupt change from 30uA to 1.1mA in above mode.Later, current keep 1.1mA not change. Now ,the beacon still can work normally. Thanks.I hope you can give me some comments.

RE: NRF51 current abrupt change

Stian Røed Hafskjold — Mon, 22 Jan 2018 11:52:16 GMT

Can you describe your setup please. Hardware, how you measure current, software you are using etc.

RE: NRF51 current abrupt change

nemik — Sat, 20 Jan 2018 16:00:28 GMT

Check your error handler and if you're running in a debug mode. If there is some error occurring, maybe it's stuck in a while loop or restarting. That would probably use more than 1.1mA though, do you have a way to see the current over time on an oscilloscope? Seeing the current spikes for the beacon transmissions and what's happening after the few minutes will help you a lot in debugging.