Power leakage: save 40mW by turning GSM on

Werner Almesberger werner at openmoko.org
Tue Feb 3 18:39:53 CET 2009


Harald Welte wrote:
> Since GTA03 is still early, it would probably be good to buid an automated
> testsuite for it.  Everything can run self-contained on the device itself,
> the coulomb counter is used as current meter.

Thanks ! ;-) Yes, I also think automation is the only sane way to do
such tests on a regular basis. As even those few early results show,
it's not enough to do these measurements once, since things change
over time.

It should be fun to get the Coulomb counter to do those measurements
for us. The resolution of 180 uA or 1.5 mW is a little coarse, though.

> This way it would be good to test for regressions in every hardware
> prototype version,

And even a good test at the prototype SMT factory to see if there are
any obvious SMT issues.

> Might even be something that could be used at least for a few measurements
> by production testing.

Yup, Christopher may already be thinking in this direction. The
slowness of the Coulomb counter (best-case measurement frequency
would be one every 10.24 seconds) may be an obstacle for production
testing, though.

- Werner



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