6 years, 2 months ago.

Power consumption profile

Hello,

I running the very simple blinky sample program

#include "mbed.h"

DigitalOut led1(LED1);

// main() runs in its own thread in the OS
int main() {
    
    mbed_error_status_t status = MBED_SUCCESS;
    
    while (true) {
        led1 = !led1;
        wait(0.5);
    }
}

and I am trying to understand the power consumption profile. The program is running on a nRF51/52 platform and I am using the nRF6707 power profiler kit for measuring the consumption.

When I run the same program using the nRF sdk, I can measure as expected a consumption peak in mA every 0.5 sec and a very low consumption (microA) in between the peaks. When the same board is loaded with the code above compiled with the online compiler for the nRF platform, I get a profile as shown in the attached picture. I added the NDEBUG and __ASSERT_MSG compile macros (but the results are the same with or without the macros). I don't understand what the small power consumption peaks (still above 1 mA) in between the higher peaks are ?

Is there a way to get the expected behavior ?

Tx