Adafruit Feather HUZZAH ESP8266 Power Consume Moderators: adafruit_support_bill, adafruit

[djusten]

Dear All,
I'm using an Adafruit Feather Huzzah esp8266 (https://learn.adafruit.com/adafruit-fea ... 6/overview) and my problem is related a power consume.
My power supply is Lithium Ion Polymer Battery - 3.7v 600mAh, my program starts, conect to wifi, conect to io.adafruit.com, todo a publish and enter em deep sleep for 30 minutes, for put in deep sleep I'm calling

Code: Select all | TOGGLE FULL SIZE

ESP.deepSleep(30 * 1000000);

Following ESP8266 datasheet, in deep sleep it should consume ~10uA, but my Adafruit Feather Huzzah esp8266 is consuming 6,5mA in deep sleep mode, you can check it in the picture attached.
Can anyone help-me about "Adafruit Feather Huzzah esp8266" current consume? Is it 6,5mA current consume in deep sleep? Is it right?
Thank you guys.
Bests
Diogo

[adafruit_support_mike]

The ESP8266 is only one component on the board.

There's also a CP2104 USB-to-Serial converter, the voltage regulator, the LiPo charger, and all the support passives like pull-up resistors. The ESP8266 doesn't have any control over those, and they weren't designed for low-power operation.

For that application, you'll be better off using a TPL5110 breakout to control power to the HUZZAH:

https://www.adafruit.com/product/3435

If you cut the trace to the activity LED, it pulls less than 100nA while shut off.. at least an order of magnitude better than any microcontroller sleep state.

[djusten]

Thank you so much Mike.
I didn't imagine that other components consumed many current. I will study this timer component.
Bests,
Diogo

[PAdam]

Hi adafruit_support_mike, I am currently also involved in a project using Adafruit Feather Huzzah ESP8266 WiFi module powering a DHT-22 temperature and humidity sensor.

Based on what you suggested in the previous comment, Adafruit TPL5110 Power Timer seems to be the component that help me to reduce the power consumption of my circuit. But my concern is, is it possible to reduce the power consumption to 60uA or below as I wish to prolong my battery life to up to at least one year. I am currently using a Li-Po rechargeable battery with 3.7V and 1300mAh capacity. Please advise and I am looking forward to receiving your favorable reply soon.

Thank you in advance.

[adafruit_support_mike]

The TPL5110 pulls less than 100nA if you cut the trace to the indicator LED, which comes to an energy consumption rate of less than 1mAh per year.

The longer you want a battery to last, the more low-order terms you have to deal with though. All batteries have a self-discharge rate, and all battery chemistries are sensitive to changes in temperature. You'll also have to control things like parasitic current across the surface of the PCB through adsorbed humidity, and literal charge evaporation from airflow blowing electrons away from the battery contacts.

The best I can say is that the TPL5110 shouldn't be a major source of energy loss above 1mAh per year.

[djusten]

Only as information, I changed my project and added a TPL5110. Unfortunately I didn't have a equipment to measure real power consume, but it's very low, you can see in the picture below. Bests.

[mikejbedford]

Question on this, I am having the same problems as other people where I want the unit to run off of batteries for as long as possible but that is not happening due to the current draw of the Huzzah Feather even while the ESP is asleep. I saw the TPL5110 board and the post here where it solved one users similar issue and draws just 100nA with the LED trace cut. I am thinking about getting a few of these as well to solve my issue. However, one thing I don't understand is what happens to the USB data/Lipo charge while the TPL5110 is sleeping?

For example, let's say that I have the TPL5110 set to every hour but I also know that I need to either upload new code OR most importantly, charge the battery. It seems that these would not be possible while the TPL5110 is sleeping the device because everything (the Serial chip, the LiPo charger) will all be powered off. What is the best way around this so that I can charge or upload ideally without having to open the device up and change around a bunch of wiring or jumpers. It would be nice if I could modify something so that when a cable is plugged in to the USB connector on the HUZZAH that it would bypass the TPL5110 and power or charge. Is there a way to do this?

Thanks!

EDIT - Actually, in looking at the schematic and thinking about it more (Adafruit, please confirm the below), USB will provide power (likely 5VDC) on the VBUS net when USB is plugged in. What would be cool and solve my issue is if I could use that 5VDC to enable TPL5110 and keep it enabled as long as USB is plugged in. This would make it so the TPL5110 is not active unless you are running on battery and if you are plugged in, device would stay on all the time allowing you to do UART and charge functions.

[adafruit_support_mike]

Using a TPL5111 to shut down the Feather's voltage regulator would leave the ESP8266 disabled when a USB cable was plugged in.

The TPL5110 breakout controls device power directly, so you can connect it to a Feather's BAT pin and it will behave more or less like a LiPo. Plugging in a USB cable overrides power from BAT, so the ESP8266 will be free to upload code as long as the USB cable is connected.

[mikejbedford]

Mike,

Thank you for the reply and that makes sense, so, USB would power the board and I would be able to upload code. However, I think the battery would not charge as the TPL board would be off, essentially disconnecting the LiPo. This is still an issue.

I think what has to happen unless you can think of something better is to use the TPL5111 to drive the enable of the regulator off. When USB is plugged in, I will have to tap off of the 5V VBUS line from USB, invert it to a low signal, and use that to hold down the reset on the TPL5111 so it turns on and stays on as long as USB is plugged in. This will enable the regulator, keep it enabled and also, allow the battery to charge....i think.

[adafruit_support_mike]

Bottom line, a device that gets plugged into a USB cable on a regular basis isn't a standard low-power application. The TPL5110 is designed for things like remote data monitors that charge the battery from a solar panel, and need to operate for months or years without service.

You can connect an external LiPo charger to the battery the TPL5110 controls, and wire that to a Feather's USB pin if you want it to take power from a USB cable. The TPL5110 isn't smart enough to know about self-charging loads though.

[olorin113]

Hello

It is possible to connect the VBUS (or STAT pin of Lipo charger, the orange led on HUZZAH board ) to the the DRV of the TPL5110 ?
When the USB is plugged, it's set up the Mosfet and reload the battery.

it's could be wrong, with differents diodes on the schematics, but I search a solution :).

Thanks in advance

[adafruit_support_mike]

With no other input, the TPL5110 will keep power connected 50ms less than the length of its timing interval. A Feather's LiPo charger should probably be able to back-power the LiPo during that time, and the 50ms dropout wouldn't matter as far as the LiPo or charger are concerned.

The breakout isn't designed to be used that way though, and there are other design problems you'd have to deal with. In general, boards set up to work with a TPL5110 will boot, do something, then shut themselves down as soon as they can. Adding a 'charging the battery' mode that detects a USB cable and changes the system behavior would be more work than unplugging the LiPo from the TPL5110 and plugging it into the Feather long enough to charge.

[olorin113]

Thank you for your answer.

My project integrate an 1.5W/5v solar panel plug in USB. And I wake-up the board ~6s (take humidity/temperature/power voltage and send to the wifi server) every 20min.

Maybe I could integrate in my program :
- When the the solar panel supplies a sufficient voltage/current on the board, AND the board is wake-up by the TPL5110 :
=> we charge the battery as soon as possible, and reset the watchdog at regular interval on TPL5110 to keep the board power up.
( I run my program during 6s, and if the solar panel supplies sufficient power, I do a loop to charge the battery and run program at regular interval, until the sunset :) )
- When the the solar panel supplies a insufficient voltage/current on the board :
=> we send a halt command to the TPL5110 to switch off the board.

Is not really optimized, but it's just the beginning.

[adafruit_support_mike]

Solar panels don't work well by themselves for charging batteries. The output fluctuates too much, and there's a tradeoff between voltage and current that needs to be balanced in order to use the panel efficiently. You need to condition the power with a circuit called a Maximum Power Point Tracker or MPPT.

Out Solar LiPo Charger uses a simplified version of an MPPT optimized for 6v panels:

https://www.adafruit.com/product/390

Connect the LiPo to something like that so it can charge continuously and efficiently, then let the TPL5110 control power to the load.

[untitled86]

I’m running my weather station at 20 micro amps (not milliamps) in “sleep” mode. That’s 3x better than the “deepsleep” of the ESP8266 if everything is working perfectly and you have nothing else connected.

I just connected a $1 RTC DS3231 (Amazon), and NPN Transistor, three resistors and RTCLib with a dash of extra code to use the alarm feature.

The Huzzah Feather draws a ton of current even in the ESP’s deepsleep, like others have said I saw 6.5mA instead of 60uA. This doesn’t matter though because I’m turning the whole board off via the Enable pin to get down to my 20 microamps.

Here’s the setup...

1) Replace the 10k pull-up resistor on the huzzah’s Enable pin (R7) with a 240k. Sounds hard, it’s easy.

2) Wire a GPIO to the Collect on the NPN transistor.

3) Connect the Alarm pin to the Base pin of the NPN transistor. Then add a 240k resistor from that pin to VBUS (labeled USB pin on board). ...Resistor nessesary because alarm pin doesn’t source it’s own current.

4) Connect the Emit pin of the NPN transistor to the Enable pin on the Huzzah Feather. Add two 40K resistors (in parallel) to ground (or maybe just use one 20K but this is what I did).

Boom. This also allows the Huzzah Feather to charge my battery via the solar panel while it’s sleeping. I added a diode in-line on my solar panels V+ because it drew current (that’s connected to the pin labeled USB on the Huzzah Feather).

Note: This would have been way more simple except the RTC’s alarm pin goes high when I need it to go low :/ The NPN inverts this for me.