I want to build something that is powered with battery's and that should work autonomous for a while.
When I started testing I was amazed with the amount of power my Arduino used.
I've never measured the current of a project because I always powered the project from an power adapter.
I found out that I used 50mA when it wasn't doing anything particular.
I soon found out that to reduce power consumption there were a lot of tricks available.
- The Arduino is powered from a simple linear voltage converter (cheap, but inefficient)
- It has a few LED's that consume power
- There are a few features that use power even when they aren't used (serial ports, ADC, PWM and so on)
- Some settings can reduce power without compromising the working of the MCU
- Chips like the ones used on Arduino have many ways to set them a sleep (or idle)
- And so on.
I've learned a few tips and tricks that I want everyone to know.
I also want everyone to post their own ideas and tips.
Maybe we can even get Matrix to implement features that can be used in projects to reduce power consumption.
Here are already a few tricks that can be used with an Arduino to reduce power.
- Get rid of the voltage converter and use a modern DC to DC converter
- Get rid of the LED's
- Put all non used ports in a high or low state (strange but that reduces the power consumption)
- Use some of the many power saving states (POWER_MODE_IDLE)
- Lower the clock speed.
- Disable all non used protocols (power_adc_disable(),power_spi_disable(),power_timer0_disable(), power_timer1_disable(),power_timer2_disable(),power_twi_disable())
- Use the Power Reduction Register to put the chip in a certain lower power state (see chapter 14.12.3. Power Reduction Register on page 71 of the datasheet).
- Wake the chip from it's sleep mode via an interrupt or even by a timer generated interrupt. (look for examples in this serie: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ktvUunBQQD0 )
I hope this can be a start of a long list of power saving tricks for many types of MCU's
Please add your own tips please..
@Matrix, could you start thinking of a feature that can put a chip to sleep, and have settings that could be set to get it fully working again?