To reduce power consumption

Hi AXISCADES,

Thank you for posting your question online.

CADES said:

The aim is to achieve the working of DA14531 as a beacon with necessary application.

The above involves the use of extended sleep mode as well where the advertising interval is set to 1.3sec so the device advertises, goes to sleep and wakes up to perform the same on loop,

I used our ibeacon project, and I only changed the Advertising intervals equal to 1.3sec. After that I could see on the Power Profiler:

As you can see the Avg Current is 22uA. 

CADES said:

Can the current consumed during sleep time be reduced any further?

According to the screenshot you shared, I can see that the DA14531 is going successfully into Extended Sleep Mode between the advertising intervals. You could possibly drop the current consumption a bit more if you do not retain the RAM blocks while on Extended Sleep Mode. 
Please refer on the BLE Sleep Modes Tutorial:
You can check the RAM retained blocks on the da1458x_config_advanced.h file:

/****************************************************************************************************************/
/* The Keil scatter file may be provided by the user. If the user provides his own scatter file, the system has */
/* to be aware which RAM blocks has to retain. The 4th RAM block is always retained, since it contains the ROM  */
/* data.                                                                                                        */
/*     - CFG_RETAIN_RAM_1_BLOCK: if defined, the 1st RAM block must be retained.                                */
/*     - CFG_RETAIN_RAM_2_BLOCK: if defined, the 2nd RAM block must be retained.                                */
/*     - CFG_RETAIN_RAM_3_BLOCK: if defined, the 3rd RAM block must be retained.                                */
/*                                                                                                              */
/* If the CFG_CUSTOM_SCATTER_FILE flag is undefined, the system knows which blocks to retain based on the       */
/* default SDK scatter file.                                                                                    */
/****************************************************************************************************************/
#define CFG_RETAIN_RAM_1_BLOCK
#define CFG_RETAIN_RAM_2_BLOCK
#define CFG_RETAIN_RAM_3_BLOCK

I thank for the reply!

I have been using the above mentioned SDK to develop an iBeacon application.

The following observations were made:

1. Sleep current of 11.91uA (Extended sleep mode).

2. Average current of 20uA (TX power: 0dBm, Advertising interval: 1.3 seconds).

3. Peak current of 3.27 mA (During the advertising).

With the above measurements expected battery life using a CR2032 battery which claims to have a capacity of 220mAh is 1.3 years when a current of 20uA is consumed.

The calculation for which is checked here: https://www.digikey.in/en/resources/conversion-calculators/conversion-calculator-battery-life

Similarly, when a FeasyBeacon with the iOS & Android FeasyBeacon SDK claims to use the same battery including the specifications of advertising interval to be 1.3 seconds and the TX power to be 0dBm to last 3 years.

PFA a screenshot of the specifications:

Is there a way this can be achieved?

Also, another observation made is to use the function spi_flash_power_down() to reduce the current consumption as discussed below:

community.renesas.com/.../current-consumption-due-to-spi-flash-on-da14531-module

Yet this resulted in failure, is there anything related to the above to be done?

Any help shall be appreciated.TIA.

Warm regards,

AXISCADES.

Hi AXISCADES,

Thank you for the reply.
Could you please clarify if you are using the DA14531 SoC or the DA14531MOD? 
Could you also please clarify if you are testing this on a custom board or one of our Dev Kits?

The current consumption measurements I shared on my previous answer regarding the ibeacon project are INCORRECT.
The reason is that I had not calibrated the Power Profiler.
I worked on Dev Kit Pro and I tested it with both the DA14531MOD DB and the DA14531 SoC DB. I used SDK v6.0.18 and the ibeacon project from the GitRepo.
Before measuring the current consumption, I followed the Calibration procedure as mentioned on the SmartSnippets Toolbox User Manual", on section 13.10 Calibration Procedure.
In order to open the SmartSnippets Toolbox User Manual, go in the top right corner, on the Help tab and select User Guide (html)

After that the measurements I got for TX power: 0dBm, Advertising interval: 1.3 seconds

And according to the site you shared:

CADES said:

Also, another observation made is to use the function spi_flash_power_down() to reduce the current consumption as discussed below:

community.renesas.com/.../current-consumption-due-to-spi-flash-on-da14531-module

Yet this resulted in failure, is there anything related to the above to be done?

What do you mean it resulted in failure? As you can see on the thread you shared, it highly depends on the SPI Flash you have selected for your board. If the SPI Flash fails to go into sleep, that will add up from 100 up to 400uA depending the SPI Flash. So I do not think that with a current consumption of 19uA the SPI Flash has failed to go into Sleep mode. 

Best Regards,
OV_Renesas

Hey!

I have been using DA14531MOD - 00F0100 2204 with SEGGER J-link to load the firmware. 

Also, the application using which I measured the current consumption is power profiler by nRF Connect for Desktop interfacing the DA14531MOD with the device power profiler kit II by nordic semiconductor for the same.

The above results (current consumption) were in reference with the same setup. 

Is it possible to measure the current of the same (DA14531MOD - 00F0100 2204) using SmartSnippets Toolbox application?

Hi Cades,

Thank you for the reply.
So you have created a custom board with the DA14531MOD? 
In order to use the SmartSnippets Toolbox you must have the Development Kit Pro which has the Current Measurement Circuity. 
Unfortunately, I cannot provide support for tools from another company, so I do not know if your power profiler needs some kind of calibration or if the measurements shown are accurate. 

If you have created a custom board, could you share the schematics and the GPIOs you used to measure the current? 

Best Regards,
OV_Renesas

Hi!

I appreciate the reply!

I thank you for the information!

The project used from the SDK is "ble_app_perpheral" (found within the folder ble_examples) but is associated to work with beacon structure as in the "iBeacon" project (found within the folder connectivity) to work as iBeacon which works as an iBeacon. 

The SDK that I have been using is found in the website below:

https://www.renesas.com/us/en/document/swo/sdk60161144-da145301-da145856?language=en&r=1564826

The iBeacon project used for the iBeacon structure refrence is found below:

https://github.com/dialog-semiconductor/BLE_SDK6_examples/blob/main/Readme.md

PFA the schematic used where SEGGERS J-LINK is connected to the DA14531MOD as shown to load the firmware.

Similarly, the schematic also shows the connection between the DA14531MOD and power profiler kit II to measure the current consumed.

When used the basic "ble_app_perpheral" example with the iBeacon structure (which works as an iBeacon) with the advertising interval being 1.3second and TX power being 0dBm to measure current on the power profiler application using the above setup consumes a current of 213uA (idle current) between two advertising intervals. 

But the same setup when used to measure current with our device application involving extended sleep mode resulted in consuming a sleep current of 11uA.

The datasheet of the DA14531MOD claims the current of 1.6uA to be consumed when in extended sleep mode, is there a way to achieve this?

Warm regards,

AXISCADES.

Hi Cades,

Thank you for the reply.
Is there a reason you are working with SDK v6.0.16 and with the latest SDK v6.0.18?
The Schematic you shared is OK, just make sure that you have the debugger de-attached when trying to measure the Avg Current Consumption so you can make sure that you have accurate measurements.

CADES said:

But the same setup when used to measure current with our device application involving extended sleep mode resulted in consuming a sleep current of 11uA.

In SDK v6.0.18 with the DA14531MOD and the ibeacon project from the GitRepo (with TX power set at 0dBm and Advertising Interval at 1.3 seconds) I get 5.6uA Avg. Current Consumption.

CADES said:

The datasheet of the DA14531MOD claims the current of 1.6uA to be consumed when in extended sleep mode, is there a way to achieve this?

The DA14531MOD Datasheet, claims a current of 1.8uA.

In order to achieve that, I stopped advertising on all 3 available Channels and I selected only one. On user_config.h file:

/*
 ****************************************************************************************
 *
 * Advertising configuration
 *
 ****************************************************************************************
 */
static const struct advertise_configuration user_adv_conf = {

    .addr_src = APP_CFG_ADDR_SRC(USER_CFG_ADDRESS_MODE),

    /// Minimum interval for advertising - set in user_app.c
    .intv_min = MS_TO_BLESLOTS(0),                    

    /// Maximum interval for advertising - set in user_app.c
    .intv_max = MS_TO_BLESLOTS(0),                    

    /**
     *  Advertising channels map:
     * - ADV_CHNL_37_EN:   Advertising channel map for channel 37.
     * - ADV_CHNL_38_EN:   Advertising channel map for channel 38.
     * - ADV_CHNL_39_EN:   Advertising channel map for channel 39.
     * - ADV_ALL_CHNLS_EN: Advertising channel map for channel 37, 38 and 39.
     */
    .channel_map = ADV_CHNL_38_EN,

Hi!

I highly appreciate the help!

I did as said above ie, I stopped advertising on all 3 available channels and I selected only one resulting in the following:

Average current has been reduced to 15 uA (TX power: 0dBm, Advertising interval: 1.3 seconds) but the sleep current is still 11.91uA (Extended sleep mode).

My focus is to reduce the sleep current to around 2uA.

The reason for not using the iBeacon project is I couldn't link the SDKs. I had raised a query for the same and PFA the forum link:

https://community.renesas.com/wireles-connectivity/f/bluetooth-low-energy/31461/unable-to-link-ble_sdk6_examples-to-the-main-sdk

Is there a way I can solve either of the issues?

Warm regards,

AXISCADES.

Hi Cades,

Thank you for the reply.

CADES said:

Average current has been reduced to 15 uA (TX power: 0dBm, Advertising interval: 1.3 seconds) but the sleep current is still 11.91uA (Extended sleep mode).

It is weird that even after you changed the Advertising Channel map the sleep current remained the same. You should be able to see a difference in the current consumption.

CADES said:

The reason for not using the iBeacon project is I couldn't link the SDKs. I had raised a query for the same and PFA the forum link:

https://community.renesas.com/wireles-connectivity/f/bluetooth-low-energy/31461/unable-to-link-ble_sdk6_examples-to-the-main-sdk

Is there a way I can solve either of the issues?

As mentioned on the mentioned ticket:
The SDK v6.0.16 uses ARM Compiler v5 and the SDK v6.0.18 ARM Compiler v6.
All the GItRepo examples, and the python script, has been ported into SDK v6.0.18. 
beacon_v6.0.16.zip
Please find the attached beacon_v6.0.16.zip file. It contains the old ibeacon example for SDK v6.0.16 with ARM Compiler v5. 
I have also attached the old python script to fix your paths. 
1) Unzip the file and place the beacon folder inside the ble_examples folder (inside the SDK).
2) Open the ibeacon folder:

3) Type 'cmd' on the Windows path bar and press enter:

4) On CMD type the following:

python dlg_make_keil5_env_v2.000.py -sdkpath clean

python dlg_make_keil5_env_v2.000.py -sdkpath "INSERT_YOURPATH_TO_THE_SDK"

Hey!

I sincerely thank you for the reply!!

I had tried linking the previously present ibeacon project with both the SDK versions (SDK v6.0.16 and SDK v6.0.18) but failed to compile the same.

Now that I tried linking the above given iBeacon project with the SDK v6.0.16, it worked. I could compile the same without any errors.

When checked the current consumed, it resulted in the following:

1. Sleep current of 1.3uA (Extended sleep mode).

2. Average current of 5.4uA (TX power: 0dBm, Advertising interval: 1.3 seconds).

3. Peak current of 3.32mA (During the advertising).

I have been trying to implement my application for the above project.

I want the extended sleep mode to be retained and the device needs to wakeup by a GPIO to just give a blink every time the GPIO goes high, other than it's regular wake up for advertising. As the wkupct_quadec.c file wasn't used, I did add the same under the sdk_driver folder (as in the ble_peripheral example I was using prior) via the keil application and the wakeup functionality doesn't seem to work when called the same.

I initially had used interrupts for the same but because the device is set to extended sleep mode, I had to use GPIO wakeup.

Can you kindly suggest a way to solve the same?

Also, where can I find references for the above given iBeacon project?

The project I was using before had references on the functions to be used, was looking for any such references for the same.

Warm regards,

AXISCADES.