Tag: Low Power

Voltlog #280 – TPS62840 olmBoard Ultra Low Power Step Down Converter

Welcome to a new Voltlog, in this video we are taking a look at the TPS62840 ultra low power step down converter from Texas Instruments. It’s basically a buck converter with an input voltage of 1.8-6.5V, 750mA output current, with a quiescent current of just 60nA and active current of just 120nA. It also features very good efficiency at light loads of just 1uA it can offer 80 percent efficiency.

Other features include 16 selectable output voltages through an external resistor and a stop pin which when activated will completely stop any switching to eliminate any switching noise for a short moment, allowing you to take for example an ultra low noise measurement during that time. During that take power will be sourced from the output capacitors. So it looks like this is a pretty interesting dc-dc converter, with really nice features and it’s optimized for ultra low power devices.

Voltlog #211 – Joulescope DC Energy Analyzer Review & Teardown

Welcome to a new voltlog, today I’m excited because we’re going to take a look at an awesome piece of instrumentation. I’ve received a pre-production demo unit of the Joulescope DC Energy Analyzer.

The joulescope is a low cost precision dc energy analyser which is currently on kickstarter so check the links in the description of the video for the kickstarter campaign because it has a massive discount from the retail price. The joulescope has circuitry for measuring voltage and current, from which it can calculate power and then it can integrate power over time to calculate energy. The current measurement range is from 10A al the way down to 1nA, that’s a huge dynamic range which makes it very useful if you plan to measure the energy consumption of a device that has mixed behavior for example an esp32 that will wake up, do some activity and then go back to deep sleep.

The joulescope works with a software companion that has a multimeter view and an oscilloscope view which I find very useful because it will allow you to time correlate measurements of voltage and current. That can be extremely useful when determining the energy usage of your device.