[GUIDE] Using Arduino Nano for battery-powered projects

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I have used a deep sleep mode as well as some hardware modifications to bring the power usage (in power-down interrupt sleep) to 60.000 times less than the normal (non power save) usage.

Going from:

12.000,0 uAh to about 
     0,2 uAh in POWER DOWN INTERRUPT MODE and
     4,4 uAh in SLEEP MODE

Check out instructions at this YouTube link

References to the GitHub code can be found here

I achieve the low power by:

  • Desoldering the VReg
  • Desoldering the power LED resistor
  • Desoldering the USB Driver
  • Using a USB FTDI programmer to program the Chip
  • Disabling the watchdog, the ADC and setting all input pin's to INPUT (except the interrupt pin)