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A project log for Wireless BLE Kinesis Advantage (Custom Controller)

Replaces the stock controller with an nRF52 BLE SOC and MCP23S17 io expander. BLE Kinesis with great (few months) battery life.

mike-wMike W 10/16/2018 at 14:130 Comments

I've been using the board for a while now and it's been relatively stable but I'm still not 100% satisfied with the power consumption of around 5mA. Currently the board runs for about 12-18 days on a 3,000mah lipo depending on usage.

I could just remove all the LED(s) and call it a day but that really feels like a step back so instead I'm going to switch over to the much faster SPI MCP23s17 chip which should let us run through the loop 10 times faster at 0.8ms. We can then sleep (delay) for 9ms and still have debouncing at an acceptable (no input lag) of 20ms. Theoretically this would mean our CPU can sleep for 92% of the time and only be active for 8% which should hopefully get the idle current down to 1-2mA and increase battery life to at least a month.

I'm estimating 10-14 days for parts and to finalize the new board designs so if anybody's wanting to give this project a go, definitely wait a little bit longer for the improved boards.

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