I built an electronic geocache on my development board: if you flash a correct morse code sequence on a light sensor, it gives you (in morse code with a led) the coords of the cache. It works really nice! What I haven't figured out is how to save power, as this will run on a battery outdoor somewhere in the woods.
The program constantly polls the LDR sensor. If this value exceeds a treshold (= a flash is detected), it starts executing the code associated with checking the Morse code.
What are according to you the best ways to make the power consumption for this project as low as possible?
From this: http://gammon.com.au/power I conclude:
- build a bare bones arduino setup (no development board)
- interrupts won't work, because I don't have a low, high, rising or falling trigger, only an analog light sensor as 'trigger'
- the watchdog timer set to a short interval like 8 ms is my best power saving option?
thanks!