ESP8266 Community Forum

Hi dear community,

I'm not sure to understand 100% how RTC slow memory works with deepsleep.
To put it short, I need to be very energy conservative in my current (battery powered) project.

I was wondering if storing data in the RTC Slow memory implies somehow that the SoC has to keep this zone powered, where it would otherwise shut it down during deepsleep, if it's empty?

This would imply a a small extra energy consumption that I could avoid by writing elsewhere if need be.

Thanks.

The RTC memory is always powered during deep sleep, you can't turn it off. It has no idea whether there's data stored in it or not, and when it's in deep sleep, the chip itself uses a portion of the memory for its own use.

The only way to do that would be to completely shut down the ESP using an external switch and clock

Many thanks for your very straightforward and clear answer!