I've made so many mistakes myself trying to optimize for lowest power consumption battery deplyment...

BTW: another gotcha: don't leave the NRF24 on the board when connecting to a 5V FTDI... the FTDI connector voltage pin does NOT go through the voltage regulator but straight to VCC -- which means you'll be roasting the NRF24 with 5 V...

@AWI said:

@obstler42 Got mine also

Beautiful boards! I "assembled" all 4 of them and will transform them into Sensors this weekend. At this moment I am powering the boards as shown. Measurement: 4 mA active, < 15uA when in MySensors "Sleep" mode.... nothing removed.. So I don't see any need for replacing/ removing the LDO..

How are you measuring power consumption? Are you powering from ftdi and measuring on the vcc cable? I've found that when TX/RX are connected and power consumption goes down that with some ftdi boards power is supplied through ftdi TX to the board RX, which makes exact measurements difficult. I only ever connect GND and VIN when measuring now.

So I'd be really interested in how you can get 15 uA sleep with the stock regulator as I spent a whole day trying everything before desoldering it ;)

I received my boards and already started taking the first one apart ;)

The board itself is nice, the problem is when you want to power it from a battery: the voltage regulator draws about 3-4 mA minimum, even when powering directly through VCC with 3V3. So sleep mode is useless. Removing the voltage regulator, it gets down to a standard 20 uA. So I will desolder the regulators and replace them with more efficient MCP1700 (which is a bit of a hassle since pinout is different)

I'm only 200km to the northeast, another reason why I ordered. shipped today, should arrive sometime this week instead of the 3-4w from china ;)

I just ordered a couple of those boards, sick of the mess wiring up the nrf24 modules ;)

will report once I have them working...