Computing stuff tied to the physical world

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Power consumption

In AVR, Hardware on May 13, 2009 at 00:01

This contraption:

Measuring power draw

… when connected as follows:

Measuring power draw

… makes it easy to measure the supply current, with a BMP085 pressure sensor hooked up in this case:

Measuring power draw

Just under 10 milliamps, as you can see. That’s just the JeeNode running the BMP085 demo at 16 MHz, sending a new reading over the serial port every second. The RF12 module has not been turned on.

If the JeeNode is to be used for a WSN, then it will have to get its power consumption down. Way down, in fact…