Sparkfun esp32 c6 mini power consumption

Development Boards ESP32
1

Hi all!

I have recently bought this product: SparkFun Qwiic Pocket Development Board - ESP32-C6 - DEV-22925 - SparkFun Electronics

I couldn’t find the power consumption on the official datasheet from SparkFun (Introduction - SparkFun Qwiic Dev Board ESP32-C6)?

I tried measuring myself with the following steps

  1. I cut the red wire on a lipo battery
  2. put the ammeter in series with cut

I noticed that when esp32 (sparkfun chip) idles the output is ~ 80mA, when the wifi connection is successful with esp32 the output is ~40mA, and when the esp32 runs the Arduino program functions it shifts between (40 & 70 mA - as expected with things turning on & off).

I am really confused about how Bluetooth activation would decrease power consumption & if the initial 80mA on idle is correct.

Thanks very much!

2

I think you have to measure the ampere when BLE is active. That may help you figure out what is going on.

3

Really? But what if people don’t use Bluetooth at all in their project - that will lead to a completely different amp being consumed?

I will try that as well. Thanks

4

I’d guess it’s doing something funky with wifi broadcasting/search if that’s the case…though I’m also confused by the post - are you testing wifi or bluetooth?

5

Thanks very much! I believe it is doing wifi broadcasting as when I uploaded a blank sketch it consumes 41 mA consistently.

I am solely using wifi.

I was curious if Sparkfun provides the power consumption data for different states of the PCB?

Thanks

6

No, there would be endless specs to list for the different modes and. would largely depend on the programming…and even then would likely just be ballpark figures. You can check the c6 datasheet for general estimates

On many devices we do list the sleep and deep sleep current draw if applicable (features tab)

but we do usually have jumpers to disable LEDs that can help

7

Totally undersatnd Thank you very much!

8

Hi there, a couple comments on this:

Please take a look at the ESP32-C6-MINI-1 datasheet, which is linked on the product page. Section 4.4 lists the current consumption of the ESP32-C6, which is the highest current consumption device on the board. The amount of current it consumes depends on what it’s doing, but the RX current is listed as 73mA peak, and the idle current is listed as 38mA typical (all peripherals and clocks enabled), so your measurement of 40-70mA sounds reasonable. The max possible peak current consumption appears to be 382mA when the radio is transmitting (802.11b, 1 Mbps, DSSS @ 20.5 dBm). Though please note that if you’re using a simple ammeter, it will not be able to measure the current fast enough to measure the peak current consumption, you’ll only see the average consumption over the last ~0.5 seconds or so.

If you want lower current consumption, the entire board can get down to ~15uA in deep sleep mode (I’m pulling that from memory, so could be slightly different). That’s demonstrated in the product video, see here (URL is timestamped):

The code for that example is in the GitHub repo, with the relevant sleep code linked below:

And as mentioned by @TS-Russell, you’ll also need to disable the power LED by cutting the jumper in order to achieve such low sleep current.

Hope this helps!