Custom Board makes high current in BLE Example

[Alan Ajit]

Dear Nordic,

We have a custom board and we just flashing BLE central peripheral example on it's 

works fine but when i test its current consumption its shows around 1.5 Ampere 

I need some help to reduce the current consumption

[Jørgen Holmefjord]

• Which exact example are you running on the board?
• Is the current lower if you run it on a Nordic DK?
• Which SDK version are you using?

[Jørgen Holmefjord]

The current when scanning could be correct. The current will depend on your scan interval and scan window configurations, and is you use DCDC regulator. The current for when the radio is in receive mode lay between 5.4 and 12.9 mA.

1 mA in advertising mode could also be correct if you do SAADC sampling, UART and other things. Both SAADC and UARTE peripherals have a run current of ~1.2 mA due to use of EasyDMA.

The nRF51 series current consumption guide has a good overview of what you should do to reduce current consumption of your nRF51 devices. Most of the concepts will also work on nRF52 series.

For SAADC, there is a low power mode available, that will significantly lower the current consumption if you have a low sample interval. There is also an example available on our GitHub.