LoPy deep sleep mode ?

[juriw]

Hi, @daniel we have just tested SiPy without anything attached to it, with 5V input and deepsleep still pull 14.7mAh. That is unacceptable.
The IoT product we are developing on your platform is taking our calculations for battery lifetime from around +7 years down to a couple of days. It seems useless at the moment.

We tested the energy consumption with the following code

import machine
import time

while(True):
   
   print("Starting Deepsleep")
   machine.deepsleep(10000)
   print("Deepsleep ended")
   time.sleep(10)

[swohl]

I can confirm that in my case as well the Lopy in deepsleep mode is pulling ~10mAh while in the expansion board . Also the expansion board seems to pull ~140uAh with the Lopy unplugged. Could this be a result of the quiescent current of the BQ24040?

With the lopy not in the expansion board it seems to be pulling ~5.5mAh. It is an improvement, but still orders out from the specification.

I have a real world main.py running, so the lora, wifi and the adc are turned on while not in deepsleep, but when in deepsleep I assumed these peripherals would go into standby or be turned off.

For my application the current battery consumption renders the device well outside what could be deemed usable or practical to prototype with. Hopefully I am doing something terribly wrong, or this could be fixed in a firmware update.

[daniel]

Hello,

We know this is very important so we are working on sorting out this deep sleep current issue ASAP. We'll come back with feedback shortly.

Cheers,
Daniel

[juriw]

@daniel Sounds good! We are really looking forward to this. We are doing a master thesis that is currently not working and we need to get our devices out asap :)

[juriw]

Hi @daniel Any news? We need to get our prototype out next week.

[daniel]

Hello @juriw both Espressif and us are working on the problem, it is top priority for us, but we cannot commit to an specific date for a resolution.

[swohl]

@daniel can you indicate if it is a hardware or software related? Before going down the road of writing libraries for sensors and such, building boards for the lopy it would be comforting to know if lowering power consumption is achievable through firmware updates, and what the power consumption would be. Using the specification from your datasheet of 25 uA, my question is this still the current goal of lopy version 1?

[daniel]

@swohl we have followed all the design guidelines recommended by Espressif and manufactured according to their specs. We are working with them to find a firmware resolution for this issue but we cannot give any more details at the moment.

Cheers,
Daniel

[blsmith]

@daniel

Bump...any update?

[daniel]

We are homing-in on a few areas to solve the deep-sleep mode and expect to have an update for you next week. This is an Espressif / Pycom joint-effort and unfortunately we lost 3 days this week due to the Chinese bank holidays. We understand it's urgent and we are working as fast as possible to resolve it.

Cheers,
Daniel

[ccceeefff]

@daniel is there any significant difference between the ESP32 base module versus the LoPy implementation? Seems that deep sleep is working on an ESP-WROOM32 module which achieves ~5uA draw. Do you know if the ESP32 on the LoPy itself is still consuming power while in deep sleep or is it something else on the board?

[jasonriedy]

@ccceeefff @daniel This raises an interesting point: Are you considering just the LoPy or the LoPy plus the expansion board? I know my tiny volume use needs to rely on the expansion board. But we can swap batteries every few months, so our needs also are not as stringent. (And we may need to switch to LTE-M, which should be easy on your platform.)

[daniel]

@jasonriedy thanks and good points. We are carrying out deep sleep tests both firmware and hardware related to find the issues. I expect to have answers next week. In the meantime, we have received the pre-production OEM modules of LoPy and WiPy (L10 and W01) and we will be publishing some details later today both on the deep sleep mode and the new 4MByte RAM. All very promising.

Cheers,
Daniel

[livius]

@daniel
4MByte RAM - finally! :)
Is this only for OEM or normal modules too?
For prototyping i use normal modules - after success i will go into OEM

[juriw]

@daniel Remember we are having these same issues but we are running SiPy. I know they have same footprint, but be sure to test and push firmware update for SiPy also :)

[jmarcelino]

I like the idea of 4MB RAM but those SPI pSRAM chips don't run off magic :) it will mean increased power usage - though maybe offset if it reduces Flash memory access.

[livius]

@jmarcelino
Will be good to see some details/comparision with current

[livius]

@livius
as we can see in
https://forum.pycom.io/topic/989/pycom-oem-modules-are-here-4-mbytes-of-ram-and-deep-sleep-test
we should not worry :)

[gael-wogenstahl]

@daniel
Have you made any progress on the deep sleep mode issue yet ?
As many on this thread I rely a lot on this feature for our project to work out (small battery, long life, infrequent LoRa communication....)

[juriw]

@gael-wogenstahl @daniel Heard! I also think we are a lot of devs missing maybe the most fundamental feature of a board branded as ideal for IoT applications. Remember we are having the issue on Sipy!