I want to save some power (that is a lie, I want to save a lot of power) consumed by Arduino.
I have Arduino Mega + GSM shield and couple of sensors.
I would like to put my Arduino to PWR_DOWN_MODE, but then i don't know how to wake him up. Currently i use Sleep mode with setted time for sleeping (23 hours and 30 min), because i want to mesure once a day and send to SMS via GSM. But still device must be avaiable to recive sms and replay to it any time in day (this sms could be request for data or settings request).
So i wonder if it's possible to wake Arduino somehow when it recive SMS via GSM shield.
If your powering down the Arduino chip but need to keep the GSM shield alive to receive SMS I would think that is where nearly all your power will be going. Web page suggests at least a 1A power supply.
If your using the official GSM shield then it looks like the board breaks out the 'Ring Indicator' that might be suitable to trigger an external interrupt.
Ok, i guess there then i won't save much energy or will i?
Thinking about 1 thing... to put arduino into sleep and wake it up evey 55-58 min for 2-5 min and then put it back to sleep. So if i would send sms to device i would get sms back in max 1 hour with data.
Problem here is i am quite new to Arduino and i am doing this project for my thesis.
I would like to do.. set timer (have tiny RTC if that helps) to sleep for about 55minutes and then wake up.
second thing would like to stop all sensors and stuff which i can to ensure that timer is still working.
i asume that if i send sms to device that is sleeping ... i wll recive sms after waking it up...
which power save mode i can choose to get stuff working that way?
smfoto:
I have tryed to power off device.. send sms and then power it on.. and i did get back sms in 1 min after init was successful:) so it should work
That's a good start. Now all you need is some way of reducing power usage of the Arduino & shield between.
for sure:) ill take first few days off.. to think about what is best solution and then ill try to make some stuff.. ill publish here what i achived.. (also on my blog).