Power consumption BLE Central

[Stigui]

Hi,

I’m developing a BLE remote control device (S132 softdevice && SDK 15.2.0) . It works with NRF52832 programmed as a central BLE (I started from ble_app_blinky (central) example). My problem is the high consumption of the device:
While the device isn’t connected with peripheral, (scanning) consumption is about 6mA.
While connected, consumption is about 0.5 mA.

Are those consumptions normal? Is it possible to reduce the power consumption keeping the device connected? I’m not using any driver (UART, SPI,TWI…) & LFCK is external quartz.

Thank’s

[Simonr]

Hi,

Yes these consumptions are high, but expected. You can try increasing the connection interval so that the radio doesn't use as much time scanning. For example set NRF_BLE_SCAN_MAX_CONNECTION_INTERVAL  and NRF_BLE_SCAN_MIN_CONNECTION_INTERVAL to 100(ms) in sdk_config.h. Remember that you have to change the connection intervals for both central and peripherals to make sure that they overlap.

You can also try decreasing the scan window (Although this reduces the chance to detect the advertising packet). This is done by decreasing the variable NRF_BLE_SCAN_SCAN_WINDOW in sdk_config.h

Best regards,

Simon.