Atmel ButteryFly demo board: Current Consumption

[Mr.RC-CAM]

I am finishing up a project that uses the Atmel Butterfly Demo board. I just measured the standby current and my stock board (with the latest Atmel demo code) measures about 1mA. I was expecting just a scant few uA's. Something sounds wrong.

This demo board has been mentioned on the forum before: Would someone that has one please measure theirs for a sanity check?

[HACK]

I've got one with the newest code right in front of me.

How do I check the standby current? I've got several standard multi-meters.

Mines stock except I've soldered on the 3 wires for the IO.

HACK

[Mr.RC-CAM]

Just measure the current (meter in *SERIES* with the power lead) when it is "OFF." If you don't have a 3V bench supply then you can just press some test leads to the coin cell.

Funny thing is that mine is about .9mA while running and 1mA when off. The docs do not have any specs to current draw. But the marketing material says the Butterfly board should last for 7 Years on a single coin cell. From my numbers, it will only last a couple of weeks if I don't remove it after use.

[JimDrew]

I don't know anything about this board, but I seem to always run into this problem with the PIC parts. Every one of them seems to vary a little bit about what you need to turn off to get into super low power mode. If the board has access to the Atmel directly, check for the simple things that are often overlooked, like A/D converters, VREF settings, pull-up registers, changing I/O pins to outputs on an input pin that is pulled up (which causes a direct short internally), etc.

[hargard]

Ask on one or both of the Forum's below
http://www.mcselec.com/index2.php?option=com_forum&Itemid=59
http://www.avrfreaks.net/index.php?name=PNphpBB2&file=viewforum&f=3&sid=3f74d4084ad5df4fa999dc001a04cd8a
I use thease forums and have found lots of answers.

Regards Hargard

[westfw]

Mine runs about 10uA after being put to sleep in the options->power menu.
Furthermore, it's been on a shelf ("off") since ESC quite some time ago; if it
were consuming 1mA in off mode, the battery would be long dead by now...

BillW

[tomp]

< 10uA sleeping.
< 50uA when scrolling through the power up message.

tom

[Mr.RC-CAM]

Thanks for the current values. Looks like mine is defective. Everything works -- just too much current draw.

[HACK]

Thanks for the current values. Looks like mine is defective. Everything works -- just too much current draw.


Hold on a minute, I just got around to measuring mine and it's .5mA when off .08 mA when on.

I just got mine about 2 months ago from DigiKey and installed the newest GCC software which supposedly LOWERED the current draw.

My new battery was dead when I went to check it.

2 Defective units? or Defective software?

HACK

[Mr.RC-CAM]

Sounds like yours might have the same disease as mine. In my case it's not the Butterfly software. I wrote my own code just to be sure; in sleep it still sucked 800uA's (that's nearly 1mA!).

Yours could just be a software problem if you are using Martin's WinAVR GCC compiled code. Download the ATMEL site's released hex file and bootload install it. If the current is still nasty then your board is hosed. Please let me know what you find.

BTW, my board arrived with a paper insulator in the battery slot. So that protected the installed coin cell from being drained until I started using the board.

[thanhTran]

I put a mA meter in series with the coin cell battery. My reading is 10uA when it's off. When turning it on, it jumps to 0.7 - 0.8mA and then settles down at 40uA when the AVR butterfly scrolling by...