Conclusion

This training demonstrates how to perform ADC conversion with the purpose of power optimization. The ADC result is expected to be printed through USART to a terminal. With the goal of reducing the current consumption, various techniques have been implemented to reduce the current consumption through the last four assignments such as: In this training, the average current consumption improvement is significant by being reduced from 2.8 mA in assignment 1 and down to 1.13 μA in assignment 5. The peak current consumption has also been reduced from 2.8 mA to 170 μA or 690 μA depending on what scenario it belongs to. As shown, the current consumption gets reduced significantly when Standby Sleep mode is implemented and when optimization on I/O pins is performed. The ADC window compare mode further reduces the current consumption when the scenario with uninterested ADC result occurs. The last assignment with event system implementation reduces the current consumption, but not that significant. This is due to that the device still needs to wake up from the Sleep mode. It has been shown that the current consumption could be reduced significantly for an application with event system implementation when the device does not need to wake up from sleep.

With Atmel | START, it is easy to configure or reconfigure a project by adding/removing module(s) and configuring/reconfiguring them with automatically generated drivers.

With Atmel Studio, it is easy to edit, build, and run an application. With the embedded Data Visualizer in Atmel Studio, it is very easy to check serial data printed to the USART terminal. The power analysis feature in Data Visualizer is so convenient that it can be used to check power consumption during the application optimization proceed.