FIO (Arduino and XBEE) door, doorbell and others monitor

john — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 11:01:28 +0000

I have been extending my range of inputs to the CurrentCost, Ardunio, Xport pachube logger.
In order to do this I wanted a wireless sensor module.
After looking round I chose the FIO, has an XBEE socket and ATMega168, very little else. Can be powered from a rechargeable LiPo battery.
The next step was to look at the power requirements. I am using a 1000mAH battery and with the normal FIO consumption of 65mA this would last about 16 hours – not very long. After some experimentation I found that if I ran the XBEE in pin controlled sleep mode 2 (less power used than mode 1 at 3.3V) and the ATMega in full sleep I could get the consumption down to 270uA. Switching off the ADC and the analog comparator got this down further to 170uA. Assuming that we have 30 minutes active per day (I’m hoping for much less) this will run for just under 1 month. In practice (this has been in place for the last 6 months) it runs for about 4 months before it needs recharging.
I am using a low value on digital inputs 2 or 3 to wake up the ATMega and then the ATMega wakes up the XBEE.

To be continued …

John's Ramblings » FIO

FIO (Arduino and XBEE) door, doorbell and others monitor