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Current consumption is different between ampere meter measurement and source meter measurement using PPK II

Tai

Hello everyone,

I'm testing current consumption of nRF52 dev KIT (PCA10040). The test application is a BLE application. I tried with two methods for measuring current consumption (Ampere and Source meter). However, I got a significant difference between two methods.

The setups of both methods for current consumption are attached below as well. I've followed several video tutorials for this setup.

Using ampere meter, I got every low current consumption as shown in the following figure (147 uA for BLE advertising and 225 uA for BLE connection initialization). In contrast, using source meter method (set 3V to external supply) I got very high current consumptions with > 1.6 mA for BLE advertising and > 3.7 mA for BLE connection initialization. 

Are two methods supposed to give the same current consumption? Or please let me know if I have any wrong setup for this. Thanks!

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  • 0

    Hi

    The DEBUG flag is usually set in the preprocessor settings, or if you build your project in DEBUG mode. See this link for more information on that. When the DEBUG flag is active the application prints debug information over UART or RTT (depending on which one is defined) and the application is not built with power optimization in mind.

    With the PPK2 you should also power the device with a "clean" power source rather than with USB to get the most accurate power measurement possible as using USB as the power source is likely to add some noise to the current consumption measurements.

    Best regards,

    Simon

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  • 0

    Hi

    The DEBUG flag is usually set in the preprocessor settings, or if you build your project in DEBUG mode. See this link for more information on that. When the DEBUG flag is active the application prints debug information over UART or RTT (depending on which one is defined) and the application is not built with power optimization in mind.

    With the PPK2 you should also power the device with a "clean" power source rather than with USB to get the most accurate power measurement possible as using USB as the power source is likely to add some noise to the current consumption measurements.

    Best regards,

    Simon

Children
  • 0 in reply to Simonr

    Thanks Simonr!

    You referred to the link to check if my application is using DEBUG mode or not. However, the relies from that post didn't show how to disable it.

    Yes, I noticed that my current application is also under DEBUG mode, so could you let me know how to disable it? I can't choose Private configurations (i.e Common) in the top left. Thanks!

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