Hi, I'm wonder about working nRF51* or nRF52* in mesh. I know that family nrf5 is ULP but also when devices work in mesh?
Hi, I'm wonder about working nRF51* or nRF52* in mesh. I know that family nrf5 is ULP but also when devices work in mesh?
This has a high degree of variability. I'm not sure anyone has created a model for this. Best rest assured it is significantly higher then a normal Peripheral role. Likely 7-10x higher
The nRF OpenMesh is available on the nRF51 and has some support for the nRF52. This is a re-broadcasting mesh so the only control that can be quickly added is to control the power consumption is the Scan Interval and Scan Window, lowering the power consumption. There is work happening to add time sync to the Mesh Nodes and when that is integrated with the radio roles it can further decrease power consumption. In any case re-broadcasting nodes in the Mesh are and will be be substantially higher in power consumption compared to the Peripheral role.
Leaf nodes in the Mesh can be made to work in energy efficient manner.
You can also look at the Fruity Mesh that uses connections to establish a mesh, routing nodes again will incur higher power consumption, but since the radio is still time synchronized it will be more power efficient. The Fruity Mesh is a 3rd party implementation and is not supported by Nordic.
In my test, light_control example consumes around 17mA, same for both of client and server.
I'm using nRF52DK, PCA10040, and SDK is "nrf5_SDK_for_Mesh_v0.9.2-Alpha". I measured power consumption from "nRF current measurement" pins in nRF52DK board.
I think 17mA is too much. How about your test?
I also had 17mA. If you enable DCDC you will drop between 8-9mA.