Current to high generally in hibernating(turned off state)

[SaschaKt]

The current is too high in Sleeping mode on a Companion, with an T114 it is 7,5mA, with an TEcho it is 8,4mA. When you calculate with 850mAh Battery on TEcho fully charged it is empty after 3 days without using. You can not store it for an blackout or when you don't use it. The T1000 is also empty after a few days like the Heltec v3.

To be honest, the first step I took a few months ago when I was looking into Meshcore was to flash my T1000 back to Meshtastic because it wouldn't turn off at all. Now, with the newer firmware, you can turn it off, but the power consumption is still half of what it used to be when in use.

I have not measured previously on meshtastic because of there was not such a behaviour draining the battery. It can be turned off for a long while and when you turn on it is still fully. It seems that the MT firmware is handling a hibernating mode more efficient.

• Unconnecting the battery is not convenient or practicable and also not good for the little connectors.
• To let it 24h on the charger (for sleeping?) as a second option is also not good, especially for the battery being held at 100%.
• Always running low as the third option and charging it is not convenient to have to look and remember every second day for charging it, and not good for the battery (300-500 cycles lifetime of a Lion)

1. It seems that hibernating is not implemented fully. It would be nice if it would be a top prio, it is an essential function to turn off a device. Each of us has more than one node, but we mainly use one and the others only when needed
2. It would also be nice if a (spare) repeater could be switched off for storage, but also efficiently and without draining the battery.

[Vasili-Sk]

8 mA sounds like radio not sleeping. I remember pulling radio reset pin while testing power consumption on meshtastic, and got 400uA after that.

[IoTThinks]

I checked poweroff function just now.

It will go to deepsleep BUT it will be back to normal mode when it receives any LoRa packets.

I think the code should separate the poweroff by button and other activities.

If off by buttons, then can only get back to normal mode by button press.

[SaschaKt]

I checked poweroff function just now.

It will go to deepsleep BUT it will be back to normal mode when it receives any LoRa packets.

I think the code should separate the poweroff by button and other activities.

If off by buttons, then can only get back to normal mode by button press.

Can you implement please a modification so that the companions are not waking up on packet receiving and last longer in power off? I think a complete deep sleep, also Lora switching in deep sleep? Thank you

[IoTThinks]

@SaschaKt A friend did a PR here. https://github.com/meshcore-dev/MeshCore/pull/1076/files
I will make an attempt to make a PR this weekend and create a bin file then.

I believe power off is should be off and can only be waken up by button or RST button.
Hope a Heltec v3 can deepsleep under 1mA.
Yes, LoRa will be off too.

[yarda]

I hit the same problem with T114, the power consumption in the hibernation mode is nearly the same as in the normal mode. It drains the battery heavily, i.e. the 1 Ah battery drops by 0.1 V after cca. 8 hours of hibernation which effectively drains the fully charged battery in cca. 3 days. I have GPS connected and disabled. According to the datasheet the T114 should consume cca. 11 uA in the deepsleep, so the current state is unacceptable. I would have to add HW switch to the battery, otherwise it's unusable in the long term.

[yarda]

I asked on the Heltec forum how to properly put the board into the deep sleep and achieve the 11 uA current consumption:
http://community.heltec.cn/t/how-to-initiate-deep-sleep-of-t114/20747

[yarda]

I checked the datasheets. For the T114 board it IMHO requires:

• GPIO21: LOW - power off GPS
• GPIO15: HIGH - power off LCD LED

RGBs LEDs (2 x SK6812) are IMHO not used by the current firmware, so no need to touch them, otherwise they would require one wire programming to the OFF mode.

IMHO the sd_power_system_off() doesn't handle these..

The LoRa radio chip SX1262 can be put into standby mode by setting the NRESET pin (GPIO25) LOW, the LoRa radio will then consume cca. 0.6 mA, it's still quite a lot for using the board without the HW battery switch.

The LoRa radio can be put into the OFF mode when it consumes cca. 160 nA by sending the SetSleep command (opcode 0x84) followed by 0x00 sleep command parameters. Then it should enter the sleep mode by the rising edge of the NSS pin. Unfortunately, it seems the NSS pin is hardwired to the logic 1 on the T114 board, so I am afraid it would be impossible to enter this sleep mode without HW mod (I will ask on the Heltec forum).

[yarda]

The LoRa RESET pin is also hardwired to logic 1 on T114, so the only way how to enter the standby mode is probably by sending the SetStandby command (opcode 0x80) with parameter 0x00 (STDBY_RC). Then it may last on fully charged battery cca. 1 month in the hibernation mode.

[yarda]

Well, I was confused by the unclear schematic (https://resource.heltec.cn/download/Mesh_Node_T114/MeshNode-T114_V2.0_SCH(2).pdf). After closer look, it seems the LORA_RESET and LORA_NSS pins are wired to the P0.25 and P0.24 pins (marked as LOAR_* on the schematic🤦), so it should be possible to put the LoRa radio into the deep sleep.

[yarda]

Testing it now, if the code works it may last years in the hibernation without the HW battery switch.