Managing power - a Microchip Technologies' Tech-Tip
16 July 2003DSP, Micros & Memory
Products & Solutions
All the low power modes in the world will not help your application if you are unable to control the power used by circuits external to the microprocessor. Lighting an LED is equivalent to running most PICmicro MCUs at 5 V, 20 MHz. When you are designing your circuitry, decide what physical modes or states are present and partition the electronics to shut down unneeded circuitry.
In this example the application (Figure 1) is a long duration data recorder. It has a sensor, an EEPROM, a battery and a microprocessor. Every two seconds, it must take a sensor reading, scale the sensor data, store the scaled data and wait for the next sensor reading. The system shown is very simple and clearly has all the parts identified in the requirements.
Figure 1
Unfortunately, it has a few problems in that the sensor, its bias circuit, and the EEPROM are powered all the time. To get the minimum current draw for this design, it would be advantageous to shut down these circuits when they are not required
Figure 2 shows that I/O pins can be used to power the EEPROM and the sensor. Because the I/O pins can source 20 mA, there is no need to provide additional components to switch the power.
Figure 2
For more information contact Avnet Kopp, 011 809 6100, Memec SA, 011 897 8600 or Tempe Technologies, 011 452 0530.
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