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I hope it's OK to cross-post this question: https://arduino.stackexchange.com/questions/88618/achieving-low-power-with-arduino-zero-clone-seeeduino-cortex-m0. I'm getting a bit desperate.

I have Seeeduino Cortex-M0+, which is a functional clone of Arduino Zero, both using Atmel SAMD21 MCU. It is powered from 12V battery directly to 12V PWRIN jack. Current draw for LED blink test is 18mA. I tried two low power libraries:

with:

  • LowPower.standby(); delay(5000);
  • Watchdog.sleep(5000);

In both cases, the current draw dropped only to 12.7mA, which is still huge. I checked the datasheet of MP1496DJ-LF-2 step-down, switch-mode converter used by this board and its quiescent current is below 1mA, so it doesn't look like the source of high current consumption. I've read posts about Arduino Zero running on 5mA from 12V input in low power. What else can I do in order to get the current closer to 5mA?

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    \$\begingroup\$ Cross-posting is generally frowned upon for multiple reasons. Two different places may have little to no collaboration so questions about your problem may get asked two times and you have to answer them two times - or you simply only add the extra info to one place. What the other forum has figured out means we don't see that and the other forum may not have figured something out, so double the effort to you and two separate efforts made on same question. Some people may be active on both forums though. Thanks for warning it's a cross-post. \$\endgroup\$
    – Justme
    Commented Feb 2, 2022 at 22:03

1 Answer 1

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Only the LDO regulator would answer for 5 to 10 mA:

enter image description here

I've not checked the other components in the schematic available here, so, the goal seems to be unreachable without modifying the board.

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