Best low power Arduino board (for battery power)

Projects General Guidance
1

Hi all,

I experimented a bit with a battery powered Arduino on a breadboard. No voltage regulator, 3 AAA batteries power the Arduino chip directly and my measurements suggest the board can run for 100+ days without recharging. (the sketch sleeps most of the time in low power mode)

Now my question: is there an Arduino board suited for this scenario? (low power, no or very little overhead, no voltage regulator to save even more power) Maybe the Nano or Micro? Does anybody already measured what power they consume?
(I can build a custom, but if there is an off the shelve solution it can save me lots of time ...)

Again thanks a lot for any thoughts,
Jan

2

Are you looking for an official low power arduino or some form of bare bones arduino based of an atmega chip?

3

Actually I'd be interested in both. Is prefer an official board, but if none is suited another board would do.
J

4

All the official boards listed on the main Arduino site appear to have voltage regulators built in.

btw you can get micropower voltage regulators - that is, ones that have a tiny current consumption when unloaded - such as the MCP1702. I used one recently in a design that ran from a 9V battery (because it needed 9V for other purposes) and had no on/off switch.

5

jtlns:
Actually I'd be interested in both. Is prefer an official board, but if none is suited another board would do.
J

Well of the official arduino boards the Pro Mini is probably the one with the lowest power demand. You could feed it directly from your batteries to the 5V pin and thus prevent any regulator current consumption. But still there is a rather useless power on led. The best solution is a DIY board tailored to the voltage and clock speed that minimizes current consumption but still accomplishes the application requirements.
http://arduino.cc/en/Main/ArduinoBoardProMini
Lefty