SD Card power consumption sleep mode

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santosgonzalez
 
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SD Card power consumption sleep mode

Post by santosgonzalez »

I have a problem in getting low power consumption when putting a Adafruit Feather M0 Adalogger in sleeping mode as it seems that the SD Card is consuming a lot of power even when I'm not using the SD card (i.e., no reading or writing).

When I upload the example sketch 'sleep' from the SleepyDog library to the Adafruit Feather M0 Adalogger, and do not insert the SD card, there is a current of 80uA. However, same sketch but SD card inserted, sleeping mode gives 13.9mA.

Has anyone any suggestion how to fix this?

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mikeysklar
 
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Re: SD Card power consumption sleep mode

Post by mikeysklar »

Interesting find that the SD card being present pretty much negates the current consumption for sleeping. Our Power Management page for the Feather M0 Adalogger suggests about the same current draw for the board being awake with the SD card present (13.9mA).

https://learn.adafruit.com/adafruit-fea ... 2060088-13

What make/model of SD card are you using? There is a surprising difference in current draw between different models. The SanDisk Ultra being terrible at sleep.

http://gaidi.ca/weblog/low-power-showdo ... rrent-draw
B4FCB66C-ACE4-4A1B-B7F1-369E04921065.png
B4FCB66C-ACE4-4A1B-B7F1-369E04921065.png (19.32 KiB) Viewed 819 times
I would also be curious if you see any difference in current draw with the SD card if you pull the CS pin high (eg. not using the device) before sleep?

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santosgonzalez
 
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Re: SD Card power consumption sleep mode

Post by santosgonzalez »

Thanks mikeysklar for your response. I'm using a SanDisk Ultra (32Gb).

I checked this morning the status of the CS pin. Changing it to high or low didn't change much. Then I actually tried a second SD Card (SanDisk Ultra, 16Gb), and suddenly the problem is gone! Using the SleepyDog, it sleeps to a nice ~1.5mA, which is sufficient for my project. No idea why this difference between the two SD Cards (both come fresh from the package, both formatted to fat32...)

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mikeysklar
 
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Re: SD Card power consumption sleep mode

Post by mikeysklar »

Interesting that this is turning to be an SD card thing more than any other culprit.

Are there any differences between the two SD cards (San Disk Ultra 16GB) you are using in terms of markings or are they identical in that way too?

As you can see from the chart I shared the San Disk Ultra is unfortunatley the worst offender of sleep current consumption when tested against Lexar, Samsung and Kootion. If you did want to experiment more and cut your sleep draw use on of the other tested brands.

Thanks for getting back to us with you findings. That was helpful.

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santosgonzalez
 
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Re: SD Card power consumption sleep mode

Post by santosgonzalez »

They were both purchased from the same respectable supplier. I'm not an expert on these details, but perhaps they may be of interest to you. I ran the SdFat SDinfo sketch to get details on the SD Cards:

This is the card that was causing trouble in sleep mode:
Card type: SDHC
Manufacturer ID: 0X3
OEM ID: SD
Product: SD32G
Version: 8.5
Serial number: 0X8DD1E717
Manufacturing date: 10/2014


This one was fine:
Card type: SDHC
Manufacturer ID: 0X3
OEM ID: SD
Product: SC16G
Version: 8.0
Serial number: 0XD83C83F5
Manufacturing date: 9/2012
Attachments
SD_Cards.jpg
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mikeysklar
 
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Re: SD Card power consumption sleep mode

Post by mikeysklar »

I have seen issues with larger cards and 32GB is usually the threshold. Probably best to stick with 16GB or less currently for embedded controller SD applications.

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