I have a project that pulses a Western Union slave clock every hour to snap the minute hand to 12. My battery powering the BIT isn’t lasting as long as I hoped. I found the POWER extension for the V2. The idea is that right after I pulse the correction solenoid I go into low power mode for 59 minutes. In a test project, the BIT, with nothing except empty Start & Forever blocks, draws about 15mA. If I add a Request Low Power for 10 seconds block, it only drops to 14mA. There is something in the extension documentation about going into Low Power mode only when the BIT is idle. I tried Pause blocks before and/or after the Request, but it made no difference. Maybe I’m missing how to force idleness (no pun intended). TIA Don
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With this project, fresh AAAs and a multimeter, I measured:(mA):4.2 - 4.4 on start, 12.9 - 13 after pressing A, 2.2 - 2.5 after pressing B.
I tried it with MakeCode v4 (https://makecode.microbit.org/v4) and measured: 4, 12.6, and 2 - 2.2
What is the normal draw of your actual, non-empty project? And during low power? Can you share the code? What battery?
Low power happens when everything is idle, potentially at the end of a forever loop (there’s an included pause) or during any other “blocking” call, such as show icon, that would allow a switch to a different loop or handler, but only if there isn’t another loop or handler that wants to run.
When a program wants to wake up and do something, it may need to wrap the code with low power prevent and allow blocks.
Low power is blocked if Bluetooth is connected, and possibly (i.e. I’m not sure) if there is ongoing serial communication.