reduce Battery power consumptions

[Dhaval Dalvadi]

Hi,

I am using nrf52dk and made beacon. as nrf power profiler it should be around 16 uA but i get around 26 uA.

I have tried to get it in sleep mode for some hour and broadcast for some hour using app_timer but it consume more power than broadcasting.

is there any way to reduce power consumption?

if sleeping power consumption is less than advertising time then it also works. is there any way to get track of hours with low power consumption then broadcasting?

my broadcasting parameter is: interval 1000

payload 31byte

[endnode]

I would say welcome to the real world. The computation done in power profiler or any similar "back of envelope" spreadsheet is based on "ideal" numbers from specifications. However electrons in real world are traveling through real PCB and components, the FW and BLE stack operates in certain way and all together makes the real consumption. That's why these theoretical computations are really just to get order of magnitude ("will it work at all" type of answers) while all the rest must be measured on real world prototypes.

To answer your question: this is the ultimate guide how to lower power consumption of nRF5x based device. You will hardly get something better or more comprehensive.

[Stian Røed Hafskjold]

What type of equipment are you using to measure current? Are you using a power analyzer so you can measure the sleep current between the advertising intervals? You say that "sleep mode" consumes more current than broadcasting, what do you mean by sleep mode, are you putting the chip to system OFF mode, or are you just stopping advertising periodically with app_timer?

Is this a custom board? Do you have any schematics?

And, just a wild guess, 26 µA sounds like you are using the IN event in the GPIOTE peripheral. Have you configured one of the GPIOs to trigger on an input event?

[Dhaval Dalvadi]

I am using digital multimeter sleep mode means just stopping advertising periodically with app_timer and it take 383ua i am measuring on nrf52 i have configured one gpio pin to trigger on an input event

[Dhaval Dalvadi]

what is power analyzer? i found power profiler kit it make accurate power consumption reading or need to use other equipment? power profiler kit link is below www.nordicsemi.com/.../Power-Profiler-Kit

[Stian Røed Hafskjold]

If you measure with a digital multimeter you will not be able to measure the BLE events, only the idle current in between. So your multimeter should show 2 µA, which is the expected IDLE current. If it shows 26µA I'm pretty sure it is because of the GPIOTE IN event and this errata: infocenter.nordicsemi.com/.../anomaly_832_97.html. The workaround is to use PORT event on the GPIO instead.

With power analyzer I'm talking about something like this: www.keysight.com/.../dc-power-analyzer-modular-600-w-4-slots

A low cost option would be the power profiler kit in your link above.