[Tinyos-devel] more bugging about current consumption on MicaZ in tinyos-2.x

[Razvan Musaloiu-E.]

Hi!

On Tue, 18 Jul 2006, Philip Levis wrote:

> On Jul 18, 2006, at 10:12 AM, Razvan Musaloiu-E. wrote:
>
> > Hi!
> >
> > On Tue, 18 Jul 2006, Philip Levis wrote:
> >
> >> On Jul 18, 2006, at 12:07 AM, Joe Polastre wrote:
> >>
> >>> The ATMega128L used on the MicaZ has a very wide sleep current. Some
> >>> customers have reported as low as 5uA sleep current while others have
> >>> reported as high as 50-500uA sleep current.  The processor uses a very
> >>> archaic design relative to the new ATMega's and the superior TI MSP430
> >>> processors.
> >>
> >> Interesting. Which low power state? I have 20 or so micazs hanging
> >> around my office; I'll try to test a bunch of them and gather some
> >> data. I also have some Teloi, so I can do the same for them.
> >
> > I just tested some almost unused MicaZ motes and they show the expected
> > low power consumption (~2uA measured with the Extech). The one that shows
> > high consumption was used in a real deployment for several months. I also
> > tested 6 other motes from the same deployment and they also show a low
> > power consumption.
> >
> > So it looks like some MicaZ consume significantly more even in Power Save
> > and Extended Standby. If would be interesting to know the any of the 20
> > you have also has this problem.
> >
> > I apologize for bugging everyone on a problem that seams to be very isolated.
>
> I just tested 4, and measured values of
>
> 2.8 uA
> 2.7 uA
> 2.4 uA
> 2.0 uA
>
> (a student is using the rest, and I didn't want to disrupt that
> unless these values suggested something funny).
>
> It sounds like one of your motes was in some way damaged in
> deployment, and that micaZs generally show ~2uA when in the lowest
> power state. Measuring the other power states would be good: in 2.x,
> at least, this is pretty easy to do with the McuPowerOverride interface.
>
> Phil
>

Here are the tests using the McuPowerOverride. I used 3 good MicaZ (G1-G3)
and the bad one (B). The results are:

	               G1   G2   G3   B
	IDLE          3.53 3.46 3.63 3.88
	ADC_NR        1.15 1.13 1.18 1.36
	EXT_STANDBY   0.12 0.12 0.12 0.29
	POWER_SAVE    2.6u 1.9u 2.2u 0.16
	STANDBY       0.12 0.12 0.12 0.29

All the values are in mA except for POWER_SAVE for G1-G3.

Many thanks for helping me to figure out this. :-)
Razvan ME