arduino with internal oscillator on 1Mhz

no not really

If your main goal is to save power and be able to run at lower voltages then what you are looking for is ”CLKPR – Clock Prescale Register” which determines System Clock Prescaler for dynamic frequency scaling. It is initialized during reset with value of CKDIV8 fuses, but you can change it anytime during runtime. No need to avoid external oscillator or reprogram fuses every time.

Here is the excerpt from the Atmel datasheet:

The ATmega48P/88P/168P/328P has a system clock prescaler, and the system clock can be divided by setting the ”CLKPR – Clock Prescale Register” on page 377. This feature can be used to decrease the system clock frequency and the power consumption when the requirement for processing power is low. This can be used with all clock source options, and it will affect the clock frequency of the CPU and all synchronous peripherals.

  CLKPR = (1<<CLKPCE);
  CLKPR = 0011b; // Divide by 8

Of course, as it was pointed out earlier, any code that assumes CPU speed will be affected.

You can start up at medium speed, measure your supply voltage, and then either drop down to a lower speed if you need to conserve power or ramp up to a higher speed if you are connected to a host and power is not an issue.

I am not an expert on Arduino bootloader, but I believe you can configure it for default communication and then drop your speed when your sketch starts running.

yeah, I just think I'm doing it wrong. I think all the fuses are reset when you flash the bootloader, so maybe I'm just makeing changes in the incorrect order.

I think I should

  1. change bootloader speeds F_CPU etc, flash bootloader
  2. change fuses, for slower clockspeed
  3. load my program

but somehow I seem to be meseeing it up, it never runs without a resonator in. I have a pretty simple device created, I just need it to run at lower voltages, and the time to be reasonably correct. I guess I'm stumped for now.

Thanks technik3k,

I'm just trying this out, and syntax for the arduino is actually:

CLKPR = (1<<CLKPCE);
CLKPR = B00000011;

I'm trying to get power consumption down on a project here, so I just ran some tests, including various boards I had lying around.

These were all tested running off 4 x AA NiMH cells, measured at 5.22V, using the code above in setup() and running an empty loop().

Arduino Pro Mini 3.3V/8MHz (power connected to RAW pin)
default clock: 4.8mA
CLKPR mod: 1.85mA

Duemilanove w/ ATmega328
default clock: 12.7mA
CLKPR mod: 7.8mA

Diecimila w/ ATmega168
default clock: 13.3mA
CLKPR mod: 8.2mA

Freeduino v1.16 w/ ATmega168
default clock: 16.2mA
CLKPR mod: 10.mA

According to the datasheet I'm looking at here for the 48/88/168, the prescaler is actually 4 bits and can go up to 256... (B00001000).

Setting it to B00000011 divides by 8, which would result in 1MHz on the Arduino Pro and 2MHz on all the other boards, right?

Divisors are (p38, bottom nybble)

0000 - 1
0001 - 2
0010 - 4
0011 - 8
0100 - 16
0101 - 32
0110 - 64
0111 - 128
1000 - 256

Why reprogram the arduino when you can just buy a crystal for 2 bucks

because simply replacing the crystal won't do you any good -- the clock frequency is hard coded into the bootloader.

re-programming the clock frequency on the fly allows you to experiment with varying power consumption.

but then yes, ultimately you may wish to burn a new bootloader specific to requirements and use a new crystal.

Hi! New to the boards... came here in seek of a way to run an arduino pro 3.3v (from sparkfun) on 2 AAs. This is important because I'm actually just stealing the power rail from a wireless xbox controller. The two batteries only give me 2.6-2.9 volts, which is only enough to boot the micro on a good day.

I tried running

CLKPR = (1<<CLKPCE);
CLKPR = B00000011;

in my setup loop but it still would not power on with 2 AAs. Are there additional steps or tricks I can try?

we were discussing changing the clock frequency in software.

you can't change the voltage in this way.

here are a couple of options:

  1. buy an arduino that will run on 3.3V (e.g. arduino pro mini)

  2. build a circuit like the Adafruit minty boost that takes 2 x AA and gives you 5V. This is useful if you also have other parts needing 5V anyway. I did it myself very recently.

I do have the 3.3v arduino pro, it is not the mini however. http://www.sparkfun.com/commerce/product_info.php?products_id=9221

Someone had mentioned earlier in this thread that voltage was linked to clock frequency, so thats what I was going off.

I did find a 3.3 volt dc-dc converter circuit that is now in the mail. That should work for sure. I was hoping to keep power consumption as efficient as possible by using extremely low voltage and not needing the loss in a dc-dc conversion, but I'll explore saving power with watchdog/sleep instead.

Thanks.

Someone had mentioned earlier in this thread that voltage was linked to clock frequency, so thats what I was going off.

Couldn't spot that statement just now, but... looking at the datasheet for the ATmega328P it does say that it will run at:

1.8-5.5V for a clock of 0-4MHz,
2.7-5.5V for clock 0-10MHz and
4.5-5.5V for clock 0-20MHz

So running at 4MHz in principle should mean you can go down to 1.8V which would give you decent battery life on AAs I guess.

Trouble is that if you're using the clock tweaks described previously then you'll still need to boot up at full clock speed first. Hmmm!

(You would probably need to connect Vcc on the pro direct to your supply as well, rather than going through U2, whatever that is - presumably a regulator.)

Sounds like it would be easier to reprogram a 4MHz bootloader into the 328, really.

I'd be interested to know how you get on.

Hmm, interesting. I don't have any special hardware to burn a bootloader so I guess this project will have to go on hold. Something I'll circle back to as I am interested in revising this project to be low power.

I've got a stand alone battery prowered 328 project that runs off 3 AAs - it "works ok" but reading here is sounds like I'm on the edge of it running successfully at 16MHz.

I was considering dropping the crystal down to 8MHz to give me a wider power margin - Comms is not an issue as I'm programming the 328 in an Arduino then taking it out and dropping it in my PCB.

But it sounds like just changing the crystal won't work either and it will require a software tweak too - is that correct?

Cheers

As I understand it, clock speed is hard-coded into the bootloader, so changing the crystal isn't enough to change the speed. You would need to program a new bootloader in as well.

Given what we've been discussing about clock dividers above, it would seem that changing the crystal isn't actually necessary - a bootloader that sets the clock divider would suffice.

But without the capability to reprogram the bootloader that's going to be a bit awkward. Ho hum.

Cheers

If you have a windows machine and can solder a 4-way header onto your standard-format arduino (diecimila, duemilanova etc) then you can reprogram the bootloader:

http://www.geocities.jp/arduino_diecimila/bootloader/bitbang_w_ide_en.html

When I last tried with a mac (July 09) it wasn't possible using the mac's FTDI driver. Instead I used Windows running under parallels.

See also this post/thread: http://www.arduino.cc/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl?num=1258854659/7#7

Marvin Martian, why do you think you would need to reprogram the bootloader?

You also said

Comms is not an issue as I'm programming the 328 in an Arduino then taking it out and dropping it in my PCB.

So when you want to reprogram the sketch on the 328, pull it out of your PCB, replace the 328 in your Arduino (which still has the 16MHz crystal) and re-program the sketch there.

[edit]I know there are timing issues with some of the libraries when they are used with a crystal other than the 16MHz one. But it still seems that is separate from the bootloader issue. If the logic in the sketch cannot be adjusted for a lower crystal speed, there is no point in changing the bootloader anyway. If the logic can be adjusted or does not need to be adjusted, the procedure I outline above should still be valid without needing to reprogram another bootloader onto the 328. At power-on, the standard Arduino bootloader may take a little longer (at the reduced crystal speed) to recognize that there is no data coming in on the serial port, but it should eventually time out and start the sketch anyway, right?[/edit]

Marvin Martian, why do you think you would need to reprogram the bootloader?

Because of what mungbean said earlier:

As I understand it, clock speed is hard-coded into the bootloader, so changing the crystal isn't enough to change the speed. You would need to program a new bootloader in as well.

So I'm still confused as to whether this is or is not necessary :-/

Spookyman166

Why reprogram the arduino when you can just buy a crystal for 2 bucks

Personaly I have a box full of old crystals I'd like to use up. As I am presently at a river mouth about to head to sea I would have to allow two days to tie up ,catch a cab 40Ks to the parts shop, buy my crystal and catch a cab back.

I find it cheaper to reprogram it.
Its all a matter of your own circumstances and then how narrow or broad your vision is.

Marvin I am using a 14.890MHz crystal in an ATMega8 because of the above . To get the chip to run I have to change the Makefile and recompile the bootloader allowing for this crystal speed . I also have to create a board in "boards.txt" to get an entry for my board

If I program the chip with a sketch in a standard duelmilanov board with a 16MHz crystal and put a standard bootloader on the chip first it will all go off OK. When I put it back in my experimental board with the slower crystal the sketch will run just a little slower but not that I can notice ,however I cannot upload another sketch to it unless I put it back in the standard board

Marvin Martian -- if all you want to do is reduce power consumption, then you can change the clock speed once you've booted (in your setup function), as described above.

I posted some test figures earlier in the thread, showing the reduction in current for various clock speeds. If it's possible to put the arduino to sleep for longish periods of time when it's not doing anything, then this will save power further.

If you want to run on a LOWER VOLTAGE, then you may need to reprogram the bootloader to get the arduino to bootup on that lower voltage, depending on how low you want to go.

I'm basing this assumption on what we found in the ATmega328 datasheet, again mentioned earlier in the thread.

I'm beginning to think it would be GREAT to have a slightly modified bootloader that selected clock frequency based on some jumpers on the board. Anyone fancy giving us an early christmas present...? :wink:

Back on page 1 wolfpaulus said

The last thing that needs to be done is adjusting the Arduino IDE preferences file: ~/Library/Arduino/preferences.txt on the Mac and C:\Documents and Settings<USERNAME>\Application Data\Arduino\preferences.txt on Windows:
The build.f_cpu preference needs to be set to 1000000L

I see that on Linux "preferences.txt " is in the library directory and I could find no mention of "build.f_cpu".

Is this now obsolete ?