Power consumption

Forum 2005-2010 (read only) Hardware Troubleshooting
#1

Hello All,

General question. I will not go into details as to my circuit yet, but I have a small project I am working on that requires a small piezo censer to monitor for vibration. I am using the Atmega328, which is pulling the piezo every 10ms, which can go to 500ms if need be.

I setup my circuit and connected it to a 9v battery, then left it running over night. It never activated, as no vibration was sensed all night, but the battery was totally dead when I woke up.

My question is, how can I consume less power? Any good wiki pages or guides on power consumption out there?

Thanks! ..Geoffrey

#2

Read about sleep mode :-

http://www.arduino.cc/playground/Learning/ArduinoSleepCode

or get a bigger battery !!!!

#3

You could try modifying the sensor input so that when you detect something over a threshold you fire an interrupt and that brings it out of sleep mode.

#4