SampleLight CC2530 power saving

Jack Loop

Other Parts Discussed in Thread: CC2530, CC2630, CC2650, Z-STACK, CC2538

Hello,

I wanted to know how I can save the most power on a CC2530 using the SampleLight program? What parts of the code can I get rid of to save power and how can I shut down the power on as much stuff during inactivity? How can I put the CC2530 in full sleep and complete power saving until it receives a command from the coordinator? I would appreciate any responses.

over 9 years ago

0 YiKai Chen over 9 years ago

Guru 735685 points

You have to configure SampleLight as end device and define POWER_SAVING in compile option.

0 Jack Loop over 9 years ago in reply to YiKai Chen

Guru 17870 points

I already did those two options, but it doesn't seem to be good enough because I had my 9v battery with a regulator connected to the CC2530 board, and the battery drained out within a few hours. What else could I try?

0 YiKai Chen over 9 years ago in reply to Jack Loop

Guru 735685 points

Do you use power analyzer to check the power consumption of your HW? I think there might be current leakage on unused pins of your HW.

0 Jack Loop over 9 years ago in reply to YiKai Chen

Guru 17870 points

I suspect that the CC2530 ZigBee chip draws power when it is idle. Do you know which ZigBee chip will draw the least amount of power when idle?

0 YiKai Chen over 9 years ago in reply to Jack Loop

Guru 735685 points

I don't understand your question. Can you elaborate?

0 Jack Loop over 9 years ago in reply to YiKai Chen

Guru 17870 points

Do you know which ZigBee chip takes the least amount of power from a battery source?

0 YiKai Chen over 9 years ago in reply to Jack Loop

Guru 735685 points

It's CC2630.

0 Jack Loop over 9 years ago in reply to YiKai Chen

Guru 17870 points

1) When the CC2630 is powered by a battery with the SampleLight program in it and it is idle(not active or in use), does it save more power than any other ZigBee chip?

2) Does it also save more power than any other ZigBee chip when it is in use?

3) Does it work the same way as a CC2530?

0 YiKai Chen over 9 years ago in reply to Jack Loop

Guru 735685 points

1. It saves power but not much in ideal mode.
2. Yes, it saves more power when it's in use.
3. It's similar but not the same.

0 Jack Loop over 9 years ago in reply to YiKai Chen

Guru 17870 points

Can I still upload my SampleLight program using IAR ARM to the CC2630 to get it to work? Are the pin configurations different than the CC2530? If so do I just change for example, P0_2 on CC2530 to P0_5 on CC2630?

0 YiKai Chen over 9 years ago in reply to Jack Loop

Guru 735685 points

No, you cannot do that. The HW of CC2630 and CC2650 are totally different and you have to rewrite all your driver related code.

0 Jack Loop over 9 years ago in reply to YiKai Chen

Guru 17870 points

According to the site from: http://www.ti.com/tool/z-stack, it says that the Z-Stack home is supported for the CC2630. What changes would I have to make since it basically says that SampleLight should be supported for the CC2630?

From site: Support for low-power SoCs: ultra-low power CC2630, cost-effective CC2530 SoC and high performance CC2538

0 YiKai Chen over 9 years ago in reply to Jack Loop

Guru 735685 points

CC2630 and CC2530 use different code base in Z-Stack Home 1.2.2a. CC2630 code based is in C:\ti\simplelink\zstack_home_1_02_02a_44539 and you can read the document to see how to work with it.

0 Jack Loop over 9 years ago in reply to YiKai Chen

Guru 17870 points

I don't see any SampleLight project in that location. So where can I get a SampleLight project that is compatible with the CC2630?

0 YiKai Chen over 9 years ago in reply to Jack Loop

Guru 735685 points

There is no SampleLight example for CC2630. There is only SampleSwitch. You have to do it by yourself in CC2630.

0 Jack Loop over 9 years ago in reply to YiKai Chen

Guru 17870 points

Is there another low power ZigBee chip that can still run the SampleLight program?

0 YiKai Chen over 9 years ago in reply to Jack Loop

Guru 735685 points

Can you focus on what the problem you have on CC2530 running SampleLight? If you config it to ZED, it should consume much less power.

0 Jack Loop over 9 years ago in reply to YiKai Chen

Guru 17870 points

What is ZED? How do I configure it to ZED?

0 YiKai Chen over 9 years ago in reply to Jack Loop

Guru 735685 points

ZED mean Zigbee end device. You can select it from IAR.

0 Jack Loop over 9 years ago in reply to YiKai Chen

Guru 17870 points

Earlier I mentioned that I already did that option, but the battery still got drained out and I already enabled Power Saving from the compiler option. Is there another option I can try or is there another ZigBee chip that saves the most power, but can still run SampleLight?

0 YiKai Chen over 9 years ago in reply to Jack Loop

Guru 735685 points

If you have done that, you should see the power consumption is less than not doing power saving. I suggest you to use current meter to check the current drain first.

0 Jack Loop over 9 years ago in reply to YiKai Chen

Guru 17870 points

I noticed that, but is there a way to further more save battery power?

0 YiKai Chen over 9 years ago in reply to Jack Loop

Guru 735685 points

Can you tell me what your current power consumption is?

0 Jack Loop over 9 years ago in reply to YiKai Chen

Guru 17870 points

I have found out that with the SampleLight program, my board sucks up 30ma and 6ma without program. This means that the SampleLight program consumes 24ma from the CC2530. How can I fix the program so it saves 24 ma? Is it constantly sending and receiving signals? Can I disable it so that it doesn't constantly do that?

0 YiKai Chen over 9 years ago in reply to Jack Loop

Guru 735685 points

What type of node do you config your SampleLight? zED or ZR?

0 Jack Loop over 9 years ago in reply to YiKai Chen

Guru 17870 points

As mentioned before, I use zED with power saving enabled.

0 YiKai Chen over 9 years ago in reply to Jack Loop

Guru 735685 points

It seems that there is current leakage on your IO pins. If you use ZED configuration, the power consumption should be much less than mA.

0 Jack Loop over 9 years ago in reply to YiKai Chen

Guru 17870 points

I tried them on 3 different kinds of ZigBee boards and they all got very similar results. Is there a possible way to fix the code to save power on the ZigBee board because the program consumes 24 ma.

0 YiKai Chen over 9 years ago in reply to Jack Loop

Guru 735685 points

You have to find the root cause of this and that's why I suggest you to check current leakage on IO pins. By the way, do you define POWER_SAVING when you test this?

0 Jack Loop over 9 years ago in reply to YiKai Chen

Guru 17870 points

There has been current leaking, a very small amount of current coming out of pins when idle. I already enabled POWER_SAVING.

0 YiKai Chen over 9 years ago in reply to Jack Loop

Guru 735685 points

Is it possible that these high power consumption is caused by light connecting to your CC2530?

0 Jack Loop over 9 years ago in reply to YiKai Chen

Guru 17870 points

I don't have any LEDs connected to the CC2530 board. Does the current leakage of the CC2530 ,when idle and with no load, consume power?

0 YiKai Chen over 9 years ago in reply to Jack Loop

Guru 735685 points

It depends on your schematics. You have to config IO pins according to your schematics.

0 Jack Loop over 9 years ago in reply to YiKai Chen

Guru 17870 points

How much current is this SampleLight program on zED and Power_Saving supposed to consume from a CC2530 module? What is the expected current draw per day or per hour with this program and module?

0 YiKai Chen over 9 years ago in reply to Jack Loop

Guru 735685 points

If you don't connect any light or LED to run SampleLight, the sleeping power consumption should be less than 5uA@3.3V.

0 Jack Loop over 9 years ago in reply to YiKai Chen

Guru 17870 points

There is definitely something wrong with my hardware then. I tried the original SampleLight in zED and Power_Saving, my board consumes high current. Is the CC2530 at Power Mode 3 with these 2 configurations? Since you said it should be 5ua, how much current is the CC2530 board supposed to consume alone and how much current is the SampleLight program supposed to consume alone?

0 YiKai Chen over 9 years ago in reply to Jack Loop

Guru 735685 points

It doesn't matter what example you use. If there is no IO current leakage and device enters sleeping mode, CC2530 would consume less than 5uA@3.3V.

0 Jack Loop over 9 years ago in reply to YiKai Chen

Guru 17870 points

1) Is the CC2530 at Power Mode 3 with these 2 configurations?

2) Since you said it should be 5ua, how much current is the CC2530 board supposed to consume alone and how much current is the SampleLight program supposed to consume alone?

0 YiKai Chen over 9 years ago in reply to Jack Loop

Guru 735685 points

1. Z-Stack only use Power Mode 2 not 3.
2. Basically, SampleLight itself doesn't consume any power when CC2530 goes to sleeping mode.

0 Jack Loop over 9 years ago in reply to YiKai Chen

Guru 17870 points

1) As soon as the CC2530 receives a signal from the coordinator, how much current does the board consume?
2) Also I've been looking a my multimeter for current measurements, but I wanted to know if it says 12ma, does it mean 12ma per hour or 12ma per second?

0 YiKai Chen over 9 years ago in reply to Jack Loop

Guru 735685 points

1. According to spec, CC2530 would consumes 6.5 mA when CPU is running at 32 M Hz.
2. It means the average current is 12 mA at the moment you measure it.

0 Jack Loop over 9 years ago in reply to YiKai Chen

Guru 17870 points

How would I be able to lower it down to the micro amps? Would the site: e2e.ti.com/.../159368, work so that whenever the CC2530 receives a signal or joins a network, it would only consume a few micro amps?

0 YiKai Chen over 9 years ago in reply to Jack Loop

Guru 735685 points

When CC2530 is receiving signal or joining network, it would turn on RF TX and RX and it won't be only micro amps power consumption.

0 Jack Loop over 9 years ago in reply to YiKai Chen

Guru 17870 points

Is there a way to program the board so that it only consumes 1-2 ma when joining a network or receiving a signal?

0 YiKai Chen over 9 years ago in reply to Jack Loop

Guru 735685 points

As I know, there is no way to achieve your request.

0 Jack Loop over 9 years ago in reply to YiKai Chen

Guru 17870 points

I notice that every 5-10 seconds, my CC2530 current spikes up from 1ma to 8ma for 2sec and then back to 1ma. I believe it is checking for a transmitted signal. How can I lower the amount of times it checks the signal?

Example:
Right now:
1ma.....10sec......8ma..........2sec...........1ma.......repeat

What I want:
1ma......"30sec"........8ma.........2sec...........1ma.......repeat

0 YiKai Chen over 9 years ago in reply to Jack Loop

Guru 735685 points

Try to change POLL_RATE in f8wconfig.cfg.

0 Jack Loop over 9 years ago in reply to YiKai Chen

Guru 17870 points

1) Do I change the POLL_RATE higher or lower to make it check a signal less often?

2) Also am I correct that the 8ma spike is because it's checking a signal?

0 YiKai Chen over 9 years ago in reply to Jack Loop

Guru 735685 points

1. You should change POLL_RATE to a higher value to make it check signal less often.
2. I cannot judge this firmly from your description but it is possible.

0 Jack Loop over 9 years ago in reply to YiKai Chen

Guru 17870 points

Ok. Also when I measure current through my multimeter, when I get a value of 1ma, does it mean 1ma per second, per hour, or per day?

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SampleLight CC2530 power saving