Making An Ultra Low Power Arduino Pro Mini
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 7 มี.ค. 2021
- This Arduino pro mini uses over 600 times less power than a traditional pro mini, using a couple of simple changes which cost around $2 to make. An original 3.3V Arduino Pro Mini uses around 4500 microamps when running the standard blink sketch. By making the changes in this video, you can get this Arduino down to just 7 microamps, while keeping the same functionality.
Here's a full write-up on the modifications and results of each test - www.the-diy-life.com/making-a...
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If you've got any ideas for Raspberry Pi, Arduino, or other Electronics projects or tutorials you'd like to see, let me know in the comments section. - แนวปฏิบัติและการใช้ชีวิต
this video remind me of one of my projects that I did 2 years ago .I made my own custom arduino nano. then used it as weather station adding the low power sensors. 6000mah battery lasted nearly a year on that device. AVR are really amazing for low power projects. By the way you are doing GREAT man.
That sounds pretty cool, so did you modify an existing nano or design your own PCB as well? Yeah they're quite incredible with the right mixture of supporting hardware for the application. Thank you!
I have designed my own PCB and ordered it from a Chinese PCB maker. Just added a voltage regulator and resonator and connection with sensors 😂😂. Nothing more .
I've installed a barebone ATmega 328P in my mailbox with 3 AAA batteries, they're still good after 4 years
what other sensors is it using ?
@@sahanpanditharathne2765 A reed switch, two limit switches, sends data over 433 MHz. But it sleeps 99.999% of the time, the sensors aren't very relevant
a few months ago I tested that microscope, and booooy the bigger zoom levels were astonishing, the 4-5mm distance from the object was another level.
Great upload! Michael 💪 I ordered them to power my Lora node which will surely benefit from your advice 😊 Less is more! 😄
Michael, great video and I saw your post as well. It inspired me to make low power project of remote controlled shades. The receiver still takes few mA but it does in with 10Hz duty cycle which probably averages to 0.1- 02 mA, the Ardurino itself went down to 5 uA. I like your other videos too. Great job !
Thanks Michal, happy to hear it's helped you with a project!
I'll do this for my weather station transmitter! That is super cool! Thank you Michael!
I did this for my weather station too
That is a super cool modification. I'm amazed at the efficiency gains. Just removing the led made a huge difference.
Yes, the actual Atmega chip is really efficient - it's great for low power projects
Very cool, I am making a custom module using Arduino for in my car listening to a lin bus. It has to be stand by constantly, listening for messages. I will make sure to remove the LED since low power will be a smart choice as it will be doing nothing all the time.
This is just great. Nicely done. Now i have an excuse to build a low power long running device.
New video loading.
I would be interested in something like this, but with wifi capabilities so that it connects to home assistant. I guess in that case it would draw way more power. I would just like to be able to deploy some sensors around the house and/or outside without having to route power cables to them. You know having a nice little battery powered package would be great because it would require minimal work to deploy in any location.
I am dumb on this. Hope you showed clearly every step.
Just trying to help disabled people. God bless Alton
Brilliant!
thank you so much
Thank you cool little hack
Is there a way to lower the current to any connected devices like sensors or electronic ink displays? digitalWrite LOW doesn't do the trick in every situation.
I see you only measure the input at Vin + GND. Whats to voltage on Vout (3.3v)? Because I follow your guide and replace the regulator with MCP1700 and there is no output on Vout, it's 0. Pro mini wont turn on.
I end up connecting mcp1700 SMD with wire, its easy to solder because mcp1700 is not too small but the tiny smd leg is easy to broke. It gives 3.3v on Vout and my pro mini is working as it should.
Awesome!
this is awesome
im working on a project where i need to make a long lasting sensor node
not sure how i can reduce the power consumption at the rest of the sensors
Try using bare sensors that are commonly used in low power devices rather than "off the shelve" sensor modules for Arduino's.
Thanks for great video!
Does the mcp1700 need caps on Vin and Vout?
Is it getting those from the original caps on the board? S4 diode doesn’t affect anything does it on the Vin side?
Thanks.
Thanks Ian. Yes you're correct, it's just using the original caps on the board. I haven't noticed the S4 diode affecting anything, it seems to all work correctly to me.
@@MichaelKlements
Good to know can solder the regulator directly to the pro mini. Thanks.
Great video.
This pretty cool, awesome video! Am a bit of a newbie though so was curious about a couple of things:
1.- What are some examples of applications that would work fine without a voltage regulator?
2.- Any recommended tutorial or documentation I look at to learn how to use the low power library?
Thanks!
Thanks Alce,
1 - Anything that doesn't require measurements or readings from sensors. So projects with lever or reed switches, pushbuttons, relays, solenoids etc.
2 - If you look at the low power library on Github there is a bit of documentation there.
Great Video. You did not say much about the 18650 batteries. I read that some of them come with an "over current protection PCB"
that not only switches off if you draw too much but also too little current. But so far I have been unable to find out where this lower cut-off is.
Can you share any experience in this regards. Would be greatly appreciated. Particularly for these low power projects.
I haven't exeperienced any 18650 cells that shut off if too little current is drawn. In my experience these onboard management circuits only shut off on low voltage or high current, some also have a temperature limit.
Excellent video, just one question, is it save to run an Arduino without the voltage regulator? I have a project where I need to drive an Arduino with a RDIF reader (obviously I would disconnect it and initialize it on demand with a long-pressed matrical keyboard), so, I have to same all the energy possible
It depends what you're powering it with and what you're connecting it to. If you're using an RFID reader then it'll likely need a regulated supply, but this doesn't have to come from the Arduino. You also still need to be able to supply the Arduino with some sort of "constant" power source.
The dremel you are using looks good. Have you also tried a hot air soldering station? If so, how would you say this dremel compares to that.
I would like to try and desolder some components without ruining them with the soldering iron!
I havent tried a hot air station but the Dremel works really well as a hot air tool. It's also got a soldering tip so two in one.
@@MichaelKlements
I will have to get one and give it a try!
Thanks.
Recently subscribed, and find your channel/content both well produced and very helpful! Thank you for the tips. Anyone doing Arduino should subscribe.
Thanks for the support Eric
These modifications work and do greatly reduce the power consumption, but be careful. If you accidentally swap ground and power to the MCP for less than a minute like I did, your Arduino will catch fire.
Enlightening : = }}
Positive and negative pole of multimeter is connect to ground from battery to arduino?
The multimeter is being used to measure current, so it has to be in series with the supply.
I follow your 1st video to remove the onboard regulator, without MCP1700 output pin on my pro mini is over 3.3v? Does this will burn my oled later? The oled suppose to be power with 3.3v.
It depends on the display and what you're using to power the Arduino now. Typically I2C OLED displays can handle 3.3V or 5V so if you're powering it with a 3.7V battery then this shouldn't cause any issues.
I am trying to build a battery powered receiver/epaper display for my water softener salt level monitor that could be used in a wall mounted case. Basically it shows the salt level in the tank and shows when I need to add salt. I built my current working version a couple of years ago with two nano clones, each with a HC-12 wireless serial port. I use a HC-SR04 Ultrasonic Module Distance Sensor connected to the transmitter in the softener salt tank in the basement, and a 1.3in OLED display on the receiver in the living room. Both units are powered with a usb power cable plugged into a wall socket.
I am thinking the epaper display would only need updated once a day. (The softener doesn't even run every day!) I would only need to run the battery powered receiver until it captured a data transmission (once every 15 min.) and updated the epaper. Also, I would like to put some sort of battery level indication on the display so I would know when to change or charge the battery.
Your video has some interesting possibilities for my project. Thanks.
That sounds like an interesting project! I used an epaper display a while back to make a subscriber counter that updated three times a day - th-cam.com/video/09OjXKzsNvY/w-d-xo.html
You could make something similar with an ESP32 as well, its a lot more power efficient than a Rapsberry Pi.
your videos are super great :)
Thank you!
Just a short question Michael, in situation when u remove stock voltage regulator, and when one does not add a new MCO1700 regulator, can you connect such arduino to computer usb hub and upload a sketch to it or you need to do it before hand? I'm not sure how much voltage is coming from computer when uploading sketch.
I'd have to look into this. The USB power circuits are usually connected directly to the regulated power side as USB power is already regulated, but I'm not sure on the 3.3V variants. On these the USB supply may be stepped down by the onboard regulator or the USB programmer steps it down to 3.3V already.
This is cool :)
Subscribed I didn´t know your channel
Thank you, that's great!
@@MichaelKlements ESP8266 goes to 300+ma in very very short bursts so I assume esp32 does the same. A small elec cap will buffer it decently. BTW, I've done something similar using a ht7333.
While calculating how long will the battery* last you have to take in account the voltage dropout (in ht7333 I think it was 170mv) and that that cell 3000mah rating is, most likely, to 3.0v. The arduino will most likely cr*p itself out at slightly under 3.3v so you can only use the 18650 down to around 3.4v
If you put the 18650 to vin without removing the regulator, is there any problem with that , it will essentially be feeding 3.7v into the output leg of the voltage regulator?
On the 5V version yes you'll just get a reduced voltage out of the regulator (probably less than 3.7V and potentially not enough to run)
Would battery life be increased if you removed the Ardunio IDE? By that I mean build a project in C, or even assembly. Arduino IDE wastes clock cycles, so I'm thinking extra power can be squeezed by reducing this?
No, a microcontroller doesn't work like a processor that adapts its frequency/power consumption for the workload. The chip just runs the same instruction set over and over at the same frequency. If you improve the code by not using the Arduino IDE then you'll just get the chip to run through the full set of code faster, it won't have any affect on power consumption.
@@MichaelKlements Thanks Micheael. I didn't know that.
Creative vedio ,please more vedios about atmega328p au smd thx again and bravo 😇
How many switches can it manage? I have moisture sensor turn on and off low power water pump to keep plants watered?
Can you list every item you used?
Also show location for code?.
I am not technical. Making for disabled so they can have garden plants...
Most humble appreciation!
This guide is just to adapt the Arduino to use less power. For project instructions to build soil moisture monitoring devices have a look at my blog - www.the-diy-life.com/
I would probably use it for a mailbox notification system using SMS. Some people don't have a mailbox close to their house.
OMFG YES!!!!
Sir how can this weak up every minute please inform me please.
I wonder if that regulator could work with esp32, it has rather high but short spike when connecting to wifi.
I'm fairly sure it would manage, its rated for 250mA and the ESP32 hardly draws more than 20-50mA with standard tasks and spikes to around 150-200mA when transmitting information over WiFi.
@@MichaelKlements Modifying the regulator on an ESP32 would be pointless. It also has the USB chip behind the power regulator. That chip continues to draw around 5 mA even when the ESP32 is sleeping. And according to Andreas Spiess (the guy with the Swiss accent), the ESP's Wifi draws up to 400 mA when the radio is active. The next best thing would be the FireBeetle 8266 (which doesn't have BT) from DFRobot, which comes with a low power LDO and turns the power for the USB chip off when the USB is unplugged. Strangely enough they didn't implement that smart feature on the FireBeetle ESP32 version. The FireBeetle is a lot more expensive than a regular ESP 8266 and their shipping cost is off the chart. If you don't need the extra memory or BT or Wifi, then Arduino is your friend.
Sir we need your help we use your idea in creating smart indoor plant for our thesis project but it doesn't work the pogram
Have a look at my blog (linked in the description) or my past videos, there are a couple of smart plant watering and plant care projects available.
if you want to make an ultra power blink application remove the arduino completely and just do it with a couple of transistors
Hello i have a question why we need power regulator what will be if we remove it forever
Because the atmega chip and sensors run on 3.3V or 5V, if you’re not supplying your Arduino with one of these voltages then you’ll damage it. It also affects sensor scaling and analogue IO.
excuseme, i want to ask
can pro mini use external power, and simultaneously connect FTDI to laptop USB?
because some of my sensor and module require quite a lot of power, but I also need FTDI to view the Serial Monitor at the same time.
I ask like this because on some boards, like the ESP32, it doesn't allow to provide external power when the ESP32 is connected to a USB laptop, because it can cause damage (written in the ESP32 manual)
Is there a reason why you can’t power your sensors separately to your Arduino? Why are you trying to power the sensors through the Arduino if they use a lot of power?
@@MichaelKlements I integrated HC05 and ESP01 as a module in Pro Mini. Those 2 modules consume a lot of power so I add external power to the 2 modules.
I think, the power used by the 2 modules and the power used for the Pro Mini must come from the same 1 power source(external power),
is that correct? or am I wrong
correct me if im wrong
I understand that you’re using them with your Pro Mini, but that doesn’t mean that they need to be powered through the Pro Mini. You can power them externally and just make sure that they share a common GND.
@@MichaelKlements ohh okee, thanks a lot dude. Finally i found a right answer.
That’s great, hope this helps!
For 3.3V Pro Mini, why not just connect the Li-ion battery to the Vcc and GND?
Because you lose energy through the low efficiency regulator
@@MichaelKlements
Thanks for the reply.
Look at the schematics, there is no regulator on Vcc input pin. Only RAW has it.
Based on the 328p spec., it should be fine to use LIR2032 to power 8Mhz Pro Mini through Vcc pin.
And should be fine to use CR2032 to power a 4Mhz 328p.
Therefore, for ultra low power battery application, there is no need for a LDO/regulator.
Sorry I misunderstood your question. What you have asked is what I did before putting the new regulator on (the test at 5:03). This is fine if you just want to power the processor, but if you need to use voltage sensitive sensors or anything requiring a stable reference voltage (voltage divider etc.) then you need a stable input voltage so I replaced it with a more efficient one.
@@MichaelKlements Got it! Now I use digital input and 0.96 OLED only and it works fine. Will double check when connecting sensors. Thank you.
My I suggest if you need very low power consumption you don't use an arduino..the MSP430 can sleep at almost no power and run on a coin cell for months.