Operation, Where would I go to find the information for both the 328 and the Mega 2560?. I have at least one 328 (Pro Mini) that I would like to sleep for 5 minutes at a time, wake up and do some stuff and go back to sleep, wait 5 min...
Google has let me down or I'm not stroking the keyboard properly... I can only find partial information.
Bob
You will have to use a watchdog timer to put the ATmega to sleep.
It can only sleep for 8 seconds when you're using a timer to wake it again. You can of course put it straight back to bed for another 8 seconds and another 8 and another 8 until you've reached your 5 minutes.
Recommended reading on sleep modes is this excellent summary by Nick Gammon:
perhof:
You will have to use a watchdog timer to put the ATmega to sleep.
The timer isn't needed to put it to sleep, it's needed to wake it up after a delay. Although the timer will only time intervals up to 8 seconds, you can repeat the 8-second sleep as many times as necessary to achieve the overall interval. There are various sleep/power management libraries which can take care of this process for you, and deal with keeping the clock up to date so that millis() behaves correctly, and powering down other on-board devices to reduce the power consumption while the processor sleeps.
PeterH:
The timer isn't needed to put it to sleep, it's needed to wake it up after a delay.
Correct. My expression was bad.
@ perhof... Thank You, My brains are falling out...
Like every thing Nick Gammon does it is simple direct and doesn't miss a single thing.
I am looking at the information and a couple of 1F 5.5V capacitors I just bought and I am thinking that it might just work...
I need to use a Pro Mini to collect and transmit Temp and RH data every 5 minutes and all I need to finish it now is a half watt 6V solar cell I think I will use one of those 433 MHz OOK 'simple transmitters' with the key line activated and just switch power off and on to the transmitter.
Bob