ESP8266 Community Forum

- Thu Jul 12, 2018 7:42 am #77003 Hi everyone.

I'm currently working on a "smart scale" using a NodeMCU ESP8266 and a HX711 analog amplifier. I was looking for a way to power all the system using a 9V battery, but it seems the ESP is absorbing too much current: in normal operations (getting the weight of the person and blinking some LEDs) I measured a consumption of about 80-90 mA, which seems normal, and of ca. 15.7 mA while in deep sleep. Here is the problem: I read it's possible to achieve a power consumption as low as 0.8 mA during deep sleep, and it's stated in the HX711 datasheet that the chip should use around 1 uA during power down.
I read lots of posts about deep sleep and no one seems to be clear about deep sleep state and the chip consumption...

Could anyone help me out? Is there a way I can further reduce the ESP consumption during deep sleep?

Thanks to all!

- Thu Jul 12, 2018 8:53 am #77005 Even at sleep, the ESP seems to be a bit power hungry and not at all as economical as promised in the datasheet.

I personally never experimented with (deep) sleep modes on the ESP, so all I know about this is hear-say.
There is, however, this guy from Switzerland that I like to watch and he has a lot of interesting video's about this subject, such as this one:

Make sure you also watch other video's in his channel; there's are loads of interesting ones.

Assumption is the mother of all f*ckups. At least: that's what I'm assuming.

- Thu Jul 12, 2018 9:22 am #77006

15.7 mA while in deep sleep

This is due to the fact that USB-Serial part of your NodeMCU still connected ...

- Thu Jul 12, 2018 10:40 am #77009 Your problem is the NodeMCU unit has all the extra things attached (voltage regulator, usb to serial, etc) which prevent an efficient deep sleep. If you can't use a bare module then at least go with an ESP-01 with this mod http://www.instructables.com/id/Enable- ... SP8266-01/ and you can bring that into deep sleep. See this thread for more advice: viewtopic.php?f=160&t=17838