Current GHI products power consumption

I was looking for power consumption data for any of the GHI UCM, SCM or FEZ products. I couldn’t find it in the website but if anyone has some data or even estimates, it would be a big help. I have a new project where low power consumption is a really important requirement and while I’d love to stick with my current GHI tools and hardware, I’m amazed at how low power some of the STM32 discovery kits are right out of the box running on bare metal using their SMT32CubeIDE. I hate the idea of having to use an Eclipse based IDE but I may not have a choice.

Thanks

STM32F401 will draw about 10mA at idle with all the bells and whistles turned on.
Putting it to sleep will take it down to around 1-2 mA.
Deep sleep around 0.2mA from memory

Does your device need to be on all the time or can it go to sleep for extended periods, wake, do stuff then back to deep sleep? If so there are easy ways to sleep at 50nA and then you get to keep C# :slight_smile:

Thanks for the input. Looks like it’s the FEZ board or G30 that has the STM32F401 on it, right?

I was playing with the STM32L4R9I Discover board with is a L4+ family part and runs at about 2-3 mA at idle with everything on. I can definitely sleep or even power down in this application for about 50% of the time so the extra 7 or so mA isn’t as bad as it sounds at first glance. Unfortunately, it is the on time power consumption that will decide how long I can run on a given set of batteries so that’s the number that counts for now.

Couple more questions since you’re being so helpful.

Q1) Do you think there is an Arduino SD or microSD module that is a low risk add on to the FEZ board for use with TinyCLR or ever .Net Micro?
Q2) How hard would it be to port TinyCLR to a L4 or L4+ Discovery board given there are some very similar F4 ports already?

Yes a G30 is a 401

How long is your on time?

Q1) Yes you should be able to add a SPI based SD, a 411 would be better as it has more RAM

Q2) Not sure about TinyCLR but a port to NETMF 4.4 is doable on a few L4’s are there are quite a few that have the required ram and flash.

nanoFramework (C# with VS support) supports STM32 and ESP32 devices out of the box… unfortunately there is no L4 port yet, but the community would help if convinced…

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Oh, great. Another option for my already over stressed brain to consider. :slight_smile:

Seriously, thanks I’ll take a look.

@Gus - Any chance we can get an informal set of power consumptions numbers from GHI?

There is not enough info because the software doesn’t have power saving features yet. If you have specific power requirements then it is best to discuss them with our team directly.