The subject says it all but I'm afraid my ignorance is getting the best of me. From what I can understand I need a "flip flop", but I'm not sure where to start.
Here is what I want to do :
Power the whole thing with a 9V battery. Have the PIR sensor hooked up directly to the power source and when tripped (the signal pin goes low), I want to power an Arduino for a few seconds, then turn the Arduino off. Ideally the Arduino itself could shut itself down after it completes its tasks.
I'm lost and don't know where to start and the only electrical engineer I know is on vacation
Is a "flip flop" what I need and if so, can anyone give me an idea of how to build one?
By the time you add the external logic to control the Arduino power, you may find that it uses enough to not be worth the trouble.
Check into the use of the Arduino's "sleep" mode: it may be enough of a power saving to make it not worthwhile to add the other circuitry.
One thing to watch out for: while the Arduino is powering up, you might see glitches on its I/O pins. So your external power control logic needs to be clever enough to avoid being tripped by a glitch.
Thanks Ran - I didn't even know about the sleep/interrupt capabilities and that's exactly what I've done. I'll post the whole sketch here once I've tested the heck out of it.
Looks like I have an Arduino mini down to .05mA so far
