Another nrf24l01+ fake or..?

[alexsh1]

Hi

I have noticed higher than usual battery consumption on a few nodes. Further investigation discovered that several nrf24l01+, which were tested for mA/uA consumption and were fit in the beginning, were consuming 700uA and 1.8mA while sleeping (all sensors were disconnected and void loop () contained only sleep (60000); function).

These nrf24l01+ were working fine for many months. RX/TX is working ok and the range is fine. Just sleeping consumption is way too high. I tried these modules with different nodes and similar current consumption.

Anyone had such problem please?
Is it curable or shall I just bin nrf24l01+?

I feel like I’m going to ditch all nrf24l01+ in favour of its SMD version or rfm69.

Thanks
Alex

[Yveaux]

@alexsh1 said in Another nrf24l01+ fake or..?:

ditch all nrf24l01+ in favour of its SMD version

Why? Sleep current will mainly be influence by the nrf chip and the crystal. Why do you assume smd versions use genuine nrf chips?
Smd resonators (the small rectangular ones with 4 connections) have slightly lower power consumption than the crystals used on most modules (hc-49 package).

[alexsh1]

@yveaux SMD version has got a better assembly and better range in my view and generally speaking personally I never had issues with the SMD chips, but had various issues with a normal nrf24l01+.

My concern is that the high consumption nrf24l01+ modules were perfectly working for a long time. What a setback....
Do you know if this is repairable? Changing resonator, chip or both?
Probably not worth spending time

[Yveaux]

@alexsh1 said in Another nrf24l01+ fake or..?:

Do you know if this is repairable? Changing resonator, chip or both?

When power usage increases over time it would be interesting to know what is causing it...