Power Management and Low-Power Debugging

Please note that the actual power consumption may exceed theoretical values due to various factors, such as but not limited to:

• Wi-Fi is receiving data or Bluetooth LE is receiving data.

• The application acquires the power management lock for a long time and does not release it.

• Process blocking (that is not related to calling operating system APIs) exists in the application.

• The predefined interval to wake up the chip via a timer is too small or interrupts happen too often.

It's advised to identify the root cause and seek optimisation if the power consumption exceeds theoretical values for a substantial amount of time. Users can identify the root cause via log debugging and GPIO debugging, or additionally use some network protocol analysers if the high-power consumption may relate to Wi-Fi and Bluetooth LE. Note that this process can iterate as many times as needed till the actual product requirements are met.

The following sections describe the most commonly used methods to optimise power consumption, namely log debugging and GPIO debugging, and demonstrate how to put these methods into practice through real-world examples and real-time power consumption data.