SparkFun Pro nRF52840 Mini - Power consumption

Wireless & IoT Bluetooth
1

Hello,

I am currently using the SparkFun Pro nRF52840 Mini. I want to minimize at the minimum the consumption of the latter.

I use the example of SDK 15.3 “ble_app_beacon” for this. I desoldered the power led and removed the use of all other leds.

The total consumption of the system is then still about 180uA (when there is no transmission). I should normally get a consumption of 3-4uA based on my tests on an nRF52840DK.

Could you tell me which component still consumes too much? Thank you in advance!

Best regards,

Maxim

2

UPDATE :

I detected that if I removed the 3.3V regulator, I no longer had any problem, I consume 3.7uA (I feed directly from the 3.3V pin).

Why this? How to avoid this problem, because I can no longer program the card if I remove this 3.3V regulator. I don’t want to solder and unsolder this regulator every time.

3

Unfortunately, because of the way the board is laid out, there isn’t an easy way to isolate the voltage regulator from the rest of the circuit.

You could remove the vreg and then supply 3.3 volts to the 3.3 volt pin and plug the board into USB. That should enable you to program the device.

4

Unfortunately, it seems that the computer can no longer detect the module, even in bootloader mode.

Maybe I could program with an nRF52840 DK and the SDIO and SDCLK pins.

Does the procedure seem correct? :

  • I supply externally directly to the 3.3V

  • I connect the SDIO and SDCLK pins of my nRF52840 DK and my sparkfun module

  • I program with Seeger Embeded Studio in the same way as if I were programming the nRF52840 DK.

It doesn’t seem to be working…

5

Unfortunately, it seems that the computer can no longer detect the module, even in bootloader mode.

It's possible you may have damaged the board and need to replace it.

Maybe I could program with an nRF52840 DK and the SDIO and SDCLK pins.

Sadly, that's beyond the scope of what we can support, but if anyone else might know how, please reply.
6

  1. I don’t think I damaged the board, because when I solder the 3.3V regulator again, I can detect the board again with the PC.

  2. I don’t quite understand why this is beyond the scope, because it’s something you propose in your hookup guide. So I guess this has been tested. But it lacks a little detail for me. Could I have more?

This is explained in the “SWD interface” section. According to the link below:

https://learn.sparkfun.com/tutorials/sp … -guide/all

7

We do mention there is a SWD interface on the board, but we don’t have documentation for using it. Sadly, we only support the board in the Arduino IDE using the USB interface on the board. The SWD interface is provided as a convenience to those customers that already know how to use it or can find other documentation that shows how to use it.