Hey Guys,
Currently trying to choose particle device that has the lowest power consumption for a project that only uses BLE. I know you can disable the WiFi chip on the Argon and the Photon 2, as well, but can see from the datasheet (for both) that Bluetooth is not on the Wifi chip for the Argon, but it is on the same chip for Photon 2.
Does that mean shutting off Wifi for either will shut off BLE function? and if so does anyone have experience dealing with only BLE while keeping Wifi completely off on any board? If it’s possible does anyone have numbers for power consumption on either board with the Wifi off, but Bluetooth on?
Argon
Photon 2
The Argon will have lower power consumption when running BLE only. The Nordic nRF52840 is really power-optimized for doing BLE with very little power and and ESP32 used for Wi-Fi can be turned off in BLE only mode.
The Realtek RTL8721DM in the P2 and Photon 2 has BLE, but it is not optimized for low-power BLE use. Turning off Wi-Fi does use less power, but still significantly more than the nRF52.
Ok thanks that’s awesome. Also was just looking at the power consumption table for the Argon board. Would the 2 rows I circled in the picture be the power consumption for the argon in ultra lower power mode with only BLE on?
That’s in ULP sleep mode. The MCU is not running, except for a few peripherals like the RTC. However the nRF52 is particularly well suited for advertising and maintaining a BLE connection while asleep because it can wake up for really short intervals, service BLE, and go back to sleep.
Normal operating mode BLE-only is for some reason not in the datasheet, but these are the numbers for the Argon. In this mode, the MCU is still executing your code at full speed. It’s about 3 mA.
The P2/Photon 2 are around 66 mA for BLE-only, normal operating mode. It can’t service BLE while in sleep mode.
