picow: increased power-consumption during light-sleep and deep-sleep

[bablokb]

CircuitPython version

Adafruit CircuitPython 8.0.0-beta.1 on 2022-10-01; Raspberry Pi Pico W with rp2040

Code/REPL

# see https://github.com/bablokb/pico-sleepcurrent/
# directory cp-timer

Behavior

Compared to the Pico, the Pico-W has substantially higher current consumption. You can find some graphs here: https://github.com/bablokb/pico-sleepcurrent/.

• light-sleep: about 21mA vs. 17mA
• deep-sleep: about 17mA vs. 7mA

(both figures with TimerAlarm). I suppose this is due to the wifi-coprocessor. Is there anything that can be done here?

Description

No response

Additional information

No response

[anecdata]

You can try the power-save modes. There are four constants available, but you can also supply your own integer (hex).

[jepler]

It might also be worth making sure that when the board enters deep sleep mode, WL_ON aka GPIO23 is set to power off the wireless module. This probably requires a core change since GPIO23 is not available from Python code.

[bablokb]

My test-program now shows 6mA in deep-sleep with active TimeAlarm. No changes with light-sleep, but that was expected due to the nature of the patch.

Thanks for all of your effort and work!

[jepler]

Thank you for testing and reporting back!