BalenaFin in Low Power Mode (uWatts)

Can I power Silabs MCU externally and let is be powered in sleep mode while the product needs to be in low power mode and make RPI and other circuitry be shutdown or deep sleep mode?

What is the least current consumption possible with the BalenaFin board in sleep mode? I am looking for less than 72uA @12V, it should be possible but in order to do so, we need to make sure circuitry other than MCU is powered off or put in deep sleep mode.

It would be great to know what all on BalenaFin board could be put on shutdown mode.
Another thing, RAspberry Pi reset should be exposed on some header, is there any possibility to tap that?

Regards, Pallav Aggarwal
Personal Blog

Hello Pallav,

The low power mode on the balenaFin cuts all power to the RPI and most circuitry (except for the MCU). You will find an example on how to do it here.

With the co-processor (MCU) idle, we were able to get a ~2.5mA@12V usage. I will do a quick test with the MCU in sleep mode instead of idle to see what the difference is. The ideal situation would be to put the MCU in the deepest sleep mode, but a power-cycle would be required to put it out of sleep mode.

Cheers,
Nico.

HI @PallavAggarwal,

Just a quick status update to let you know that we’re working on this. We’re putting together a test application to demo the power usage so this can be repeated beyond our testing.

Thanks for your patience!

Thank you for the inputs. Will wait for more details.
A tool would be really handy for users to evaluate the power saving capability of the BalenaFin board.

Pallav Aggarwal