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so I'm building something using an Uno that will run on batteries - so, I've watched a couple of these low power tutorials to lessen the energy consumption so the batteries can last longer, but they're not exactly what I want - they all require some sort of circuit. I've found this tutorial (http://www.engblaze.com/hush-little-microprocessor-avr-and-arduino-sleep-mode-basics/) which only needs an LED, and it's ideal, but I would like to know if you know of any other methods which would reduce consumption to less than 5mA without using any complicated circuits (other than unplugging the Uno)

Thank you!

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Deep sleep mode for the Uno without complicated circuits?

Forget using an Arduino Uno if you want to do low power (less than 10 mA standby). There is too much extra circuits (LEDs, Voltage Regulators, etc) to allow that.

See for instance, https://www.gammon.com.au/forum/?id=11497

With an Arduino Pro Mini it is possible to achieve low power after removing the Power LED and cutting the Voltage Regulator.

The hardware/software support for low power cannot really be used before the board is design for that.

Cheers!

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  • Thanks for your answer! Would this work by any chance?
    – A. Lordos
    Mar 18, 2017 at 17:47
  • Yes, that works fine. The suggested circuit basically turns off the Arduino board by disconnecting it from the battery. The button in the circuit will turn on the power of the board when pressed. This could be modified to an alarm signal from a RTC for time based start up.
    – Mikael Patel
    Mar 18, 2017 at 18:00
  • The circuit (with or without RTC) could be mounted on a shield together with the battery pack to build a low-power unit.
    – Mikael Patel
    Mar 18, 2017 at 18:03
  • Probably want to load your sketch with a Programmer so it runs immediately and does not wait out the bootloader starting up. An advantage of using Power Down Deep Sleep is that an Interrupt wakes the processor and it can run immediately following the interrupt processor. I made a remote control that way with an unmodified 8 MHz Promini and 3.7V, 1000mAH LiPo, would run about a month on a charge, and draw just a few mA when it went back to sleep after an RF transmission of the button press (433 MHz transmitter). I think I just powered it via the VCC pin, bypassing the regulator.
    – CrossRoads
    Mar 22, 2019 at 19:27

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