Full Arduino Mini LoraWAN below 1uA Sleep Mode

@BoRRoZ
Yeah, the data from Adafruit is non-sense. I can go down to 10uA using several sensors, flash and atmega328p no problem at all.

TPL5110 draws more like 35nA while the rest of the project is asleep.

This is actually difficult to measure such a small current without a lab equipment. uCurrent Gold is noisy on nA and good DMM resolution is not that good. Keithley Picoammeter has to be used.

Do you mean me asking Charles - how did you get 0.78nA?
This is the board without TPL5110, right?

I am getting 2.9uA on your board V1.1 with BME280.

BME280 (0.2uA)
RFM95W (1uA)
Arduino Pro mini - the rest (1.7uA)

Cannot get below it.

@alexsh1
the board on the picture is as simple has
Arduino Mini 8MHz 3.3V (no regulator or power led)
SI7021 direct I2C wiring (no regulator)
RFM95 direct SPI wiring with DIO0/DIO1/DIO2 connected see schematic on github above

Removed BOD from fuse (can be done by software) and no Watchdog use, that’s it but may be my measurement are not “so good”, but look like the same with my multimeter (1uA) and UCurrent (0.778uA) so I think I can trust the results

This is exactly my setup, however, there is still higher consumption.
I have uCurrent Gold and it shows me very similar readings to with my DMM (121GW), which is 2.9uA

would you give us your sketch so I can try on my side?

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I have implemented TPL5111 in my design. sadly dont have meter that can messure below 1uA.
Added some DIP swithes so you can choose what time interval you need.
Here is some lates pcb 01
Still wating for it to arrive, but similar design is in field up un running for almost 2 months.
https://snapshot.raintank.io/dashboard/snapshot/QTzAqP8YY8M6YfSVmzZrmyd44AS576XJ?orgId=2

3 Likes

Screenshot_2018-09-16-17-18-29 Ch21_Emvornmental

So just using one of Charles’s PCBs, a bog-stock Chinese arduino clone with only the linear reg and power LED removed this thing is pretty amazing.
I fitted a LiFeP04 cell into this node as the cell shipped to me in week 2 of April. It read 3.3v then and having woken, polled a Bosch sensor and transmitted to TTN every fifteen minutes since it still shows 3.3v! That would be 96 cycles per day or about 10k wake and transmit cycles.

I am thinking that one of the current breed of low power devices with SI7021 and TPL5110 type manager chips has power to see it well into obsolescence, no?

Well done and many thanks @Charles!

3 Likes

@Charles

Sorry for a late reply. Could not upload the sketch, but have a link for you (compressed in RAR):

https://www.dropbox.com/s/lmfrqnfjhp0p8vd/LoraWAN-BME280-NEW.rar?dl=0

Will also measure it with CurrentRanger as soon as I get it from Felix.

So this is still sitting on the shelf in my kitchen and waking up every 15 minutes to check temp/humidity and battery voltage. Battery was installed as it shipped from Ali Express, 3.3v (LiFeP04) and never charged before or since. That was in April and this is how the battery and frames looks now. I had an admirer reset the Arduino once since the battery went in but it has run continuously since April.

HallardConsole
HallardNodeRedUI

I am tempted to check the cell voltage in case the voltage divider is not right but I actually did this before :blush:
Impressive @Charles

5 Likes

Before I start by trial and error…

Does anybody have the magical incantations to upload the OptiBoot firmware compiled by @Charles on 3.3v Arduino Pro using avrdude?
(Or any other tool which doesn’t require MS Windows…)

1 Like

Answering to myself…

Worked fine with the Arduino IDE, and the following modifications to boards.txt:

## Arduino Pro or Pro Mini (3.3V, 8 MHz) w/ ATmega328P
## ---------------------------------------------------
pro.menu.cpu.8MHzatmega328=ATmega328P (3.3V, 8 MHz)

pro.menu.cpu.8MHzatmega328.upload.maximum_size=32256
pro.menu.cpu.8MHzatmega328.upload.maximum_data_size=2048
# pro.menu.cpu.8MHzatmega328.upload.speed=57600
pro.menu.cpu.8MHzatmega328.upload.speed=250000

pro.menu.cpu.8MHzatmega328.bootloader.low_fuses=0xFF
# pro.menu.cpu.8MHzatmega328.bootloader.high_fuses=0xDA
pro.menu.cpu.8MHzatmega328.bootloader.high_fuses=0xDE
# pro.menu.cpu.8MHzatmega328.bootloader.extended_fuses=0xFD
pro.menu.cpu.8MHzatmega328.bootloader.extended_fuses=0xFE
# pro.menu.cpu.8MHzatmega328.bootloader.file=atmega/ATmegaBOOT_168_atmega328_pro_8MHz.hex
pro.menu.cpu.8MHzatmega328.bootloader.file=optiboot/optiboot_flash_atmega328p_250000_8MHZ.hex

pro.menu.cpu.8MHzatmega328.build.mcu=atmega328p
pro.menu.cpu.8MHzatmega328.build.f_cpu=8000000L

Edit: actually, boards definitin where already posted in Full Arduino Mini LoraWAN below 1uA Sleep Mode

2 Likes

Hello Charles

Great video and test, the low power consumption is amazing!
What is you preffered way to power those boards?
Lets say you’re using some rechargeable batteries. If using LI-Ion this would mean that a LDO is required which also needs a bit of power all the time (for exmaple the MCP177-33: typical 1.2uA input quiscient current), as the absolute maximum rating for the RFM95 is 3.9V according to its datasheet.
A full Li-Ion battery gives you about 4.15-4.20 volts.

Appreciate your reply
Mat89

Hello.

We use for our NucleonBaseNodes used LiLon`s (1250 mAh) with an voltage (full) ~4,2V. We connect it to VCC on our Nodes and everything runs well.

Yes we know it is out off specification, but when it run? Why not. :wink:

Last workshop we made 9 BaseNodes like this and we call it WeatherNodes (NucleonBaseNode & BME280). They all run fine.

Greetings and have a nice day

Nordrunner

Fine to read that.

Yes it was the next step (improvement) for our Nodes.

Greetings

Myself, I would not be too concerned about the differance between a node runing at less than 0.8uA without a regulator, versus circa 2.5uA with a low cost MCP1700 or similar.

Take an example, a node that uses a pack of AA Alkalines to power a node for 5 years. At a capacity of 2800mAhr, the battery goes flat in 5 years doing useful stuff such as reading sensors and doing transmissions. Thats an average of 1.53mAhr per day.

The ‘good’ node uses in that 5 years 0.0008 x 24 x 365 x 5 = 35mAhr doing sleep. The ‘bad’ node uses 0.0025 x 24 x 365 x 5 = 109mAhr in sleep.

The difference in mAhr used during sleep, between good node and bad node is 109mAhr - 35mAhr = 74mAhr, or around 50 days extra battery life over the 5 years, big deal.

So no need to follow the crazy advice to operate the LoRa device direct from a LiPo, just use a regulator, it has very little affect on battery life.

2 Likes

Yes, I’m already using an MCP1700-33. Just asked because this is the ‘1ua sleep mode’ thread and I haven’t seen any LDO on the board ;).

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If the very small amount of current the regulator uses is somehow significant, and its not in a lot of cases, use a LIFePO4 to power the node. These are safe to use on LoRa devices without a regulator, safer then LiPo bombs too.

If 150mA output is enough, there is the MCP1711, quiescent current of 0.6uA.

2 Likes

Re. @Charles bootloaders (from Pro-Mini-ICSP-FTDI)…

With a Pro Mini 8MHz 3.3v, I can only use the 57600 Kbps bootloader, with the 115200 and 250Mbps ones I can’t upoad a sketch, I always get:

avrdude: stk500_recv(): programmer is not responding                                        
avrdude: stk500_getsync() attempt 1 of 10: not in sync: resp=0x00      
...

I tested with 2 different FTDI boards and 2 different computers (OSX and Linux) with no difference…

It is not a big deal as I mainly wanted a smaller bootloader, upload speed being a bonus, but is anybody having better luck with Pro Mini 8MHz 3.3v?

I love this thread… just spent many many hours though trying to figure out how to acquire the parts to populate the board on aliexpress.

I think I got them all… I spent about $130 usd for the parts to make 8 demo boards.

Would be helpful if someone more experienced than I put up an ali parts list just to be sure the right parts can be acquired.

I found most of the parts from this other thread…

But I had to search manually for the other parts myself…

I also then realized I need to surface mount a bunch of components.

Im looking forward to getting 8 of these working in 2019!

Mind sharing your sketch in some example fashion?