MangOH Yellow power optimization

Octave
1

Hello everyone,

I am currently working on a MangOH Yellow connected to Octave using the Orange LTE network in France. I am trying to lower the power consumption as much as possible
I measured the current consumption of the board for several use cases. The lowest configurations I found are the 2 presented below.

Configuration 1

For this configuration, I did the following:

  • Disable all Edge Actions
  • Disable all sensors (Location, IMU, Battery state, Light)
  • Disable Developer Mode
  • Disable “Heartbeat on empty”
  • Disconnect the 2 USB ports of the MangOH
  • Use LTE with the following command on the mangOH:
$ cm radio rat LTE

The results look like this:

floor_lte_graph
floor_lte_graph1611×1000 48.9 KB

Average current consumption is 147 mA with ~240 mA spikes.

If I zoom on this graph, I can see the consumption profile more clearly:

floor_lte_graph_zoom
floor_lte_graph_zoom2248×1361 939 KB

A 240 mA spike appears every 1.28 seconds (which corresponds to a normal paging cycle for LTE without PSM, according to this website).
As you can see, the device alternates between an activity period (~200 mA) and the floor level (125 mA) with a periodicity of ~2 seconds.
I suspect this is caused by the action manager of the mangOH, but I am not sure about that.

Configuration 2

For this configuration, I did the following:

  • Disable all Edge Actions
  • Disable all sensors (Location, IMU, Battery state, Light)
  • Disable Developer Mode
  • Disable “Heartbeat on empty”
  • Disconnect the 2 USB ports of the MangOH
  • Disable LTE and GSM connection using this command on the board:
$ cm radio off

The results look like this:

floor_graph
floor_graph2248×678 527 KB

Average current consumption is 130 mA with ~160 mA spikes.
I don’t know what the 2 big spikes of 220 mA (appearing at 1 min and at the very end) corresponds to, as the board was not supposed to send anything to Octave. If anyone has a clue about this, I’m interested.

Again, if I zoom on the profile I get this:

floor_graph_zoom
floor_graph_zoom2248×1361 964 KB

The floor level went down to 118 mA, and as we could expect the periodic spikes are gone as radio communication is disabled.
The device still alternates between an activity period (~140 mA) and the floor level (125 mA) with a periodicity of ~2 seconds.

However, the power consumption is still very high, that is why I am asking the following questions:

  • Q1 : Is there a way to get the power consumption any lower using Octave ?
  • Q2 : Can I manage to use the LTE-M rather then the LTE to benefit from PSM ? (Knowing that I am using the Orange network in France)
  • Q3 : What is your target power on mangOH Yellow + Octave ?

I Hope someone can help me with this.

Have a good day ! :slight_smile:

1 Like
2

HI Paul, I will try to run the new Firmware 2.1.4 module only on the yellow. Also set the parameter status_line/enable to false.

3

Hi Paul,

This is a very mangoh specific question as it relates to power modes on mangoh. Best to ask on forum.mangoh.io such questions as mangoh team may not check this question. i was made aware of it and have come to see what can be done.
Anyways, please let me know your use case and lets see how we can help reduce your power consumption.

Regards,
Ashish

4

Thank you for your answer ! I will try that as soon as I can :slight_smile:

Thank you @ashiot, I reposted my questions to the mangOH forum here.

My main use case is the one I described in “Configuration 1” : I want to only activate LTE and get the power consumption as low as possible. For this I did the following:

  • Disabled all edge actions on Octave
  • Disabled Location sensor on Octave
  • Disabled Light sensor on Octave
  • Disabled IMU sensors on Octave
  • Disabled battery sensor on Octave
  • Disabled Developer Mode on Octave
  • Disabled “Heartbeat on empty” on Octave
  • Disconnected the 2 USB ports of the MangOH
  • Used LTE with the following command on the mangOH:
$ cm radio rat LTE
  • Disable GNSS device with the following command on the mangOH:
$ gnss stop ; gnss disable

Also, my second question about LTE-M was answered by Orange (they had de-activated LTE-M in France at the moment).

Thank you for your time, have a good day ! :grinning: