| ??? 11/22/03 07:04 Read: times |
#59227 - RE: Low power usage advice needed Responding to: ???'s previous message |
Hallo Steve,
two hints: 1. Whenever extremely little power supply current is wished from a CMOS chip, you must take care that aplied voltage to inputs must not float!! Allowed potentials are only the rails, means exact Vcc or excat 0V. If aplied voltage is floating even only very slightly from these fixpoints drastical increase of supply current is to be expected! How high even small deviations from Vcc or 0V can influence power supply current you can see in this data sheet: http://www.jmb-electronique.com/document/...ALP-12.pdf At page 4 'standby power supply current' is listed. You can see, that 0.2V apart from 0V or Vcc can let power supply current increase 50 times!! The reason comes from topology of a standard CMOS inverter. If input voltage leaves the rails (0V and Vcc) both CMOS transistors (PMOS and NMOS) are partially turned on. As consequence power supply current rapidly increases. So, you should always look for a good path to 0V or Vcc at inputs. In your case, where other circuitry is powered-off, only a path to 0V is possible, of course. But keep in mind, that there's no natural path to 0V at output of an off-powered chip! Mostly there will be protection diodes (or pn junctions of parasitic thyristor, see another thread) connected from output to Vcc and 0V. So, floating input current of your 'LP932 micro will bias these pn junctions and cause a floating potential of about +0.5V!! From the above it's clear that this cannot be accepted. The only remedy is to connect a 100kOhm pull-down resistor (yes, pull-DOWN!) from each input to 0V. Keep in mind, that port pins must be configured as 'Input-only', NOT 'Quasi-bidirectional'!!! Whenever you configure a port pin as input, this should be kept in mind. By the way, port pins configured as 'push-pull' outputs are free from such problems. 2. All these efforts about reducing supply current are wasted, if you cannot implement a foolproof wake-up detection!! And it makes no sense, not to give this subject highest priority. So, I highly agree with Michael: You must think about all eventualities right at the beginning! Why not using a special 'wake-up' key, which cannot be pressed occasionally? A key, which is 'screened' by a mechanical guard, tha cannot be pressed down by something touching it or falling on it? Kai |



