Comments on: AA powered microcontrollers

By: Richard Kurtz

Richard Kurtz — Sat, 04 Apr 2009 21:52:04 +0000

Thanks for the information.

By: Andre

Andre — Wed, 04 Jul 2007 00:03:30 +0000

hehe.. i had an idea for a miniature intelligent solar garden lamp with PIR proximity sensor, but the main sticking point was power.

charging a single high capacity NiMH AA cell is fairly easy. Also, a simple Schmitt trigger should be enough to generate the very brief pulse train to get things started when the light starts to fade.

as for low power, use a pic 12f675 in 32k mode, it draws under a milliamp when asleep.

-A

By: Wolf

Wolf — Sun, 01 Jul 2007 06:50:05 +0000

Holy crap, I was just thinking about doing this the other day, except that I was planning to use a coin cell for the startup… Dam, guess I’ve been beaten to it.

By: akmixdown

akmixdown — Sun, 01 Jul 2007 06:47:09 +0000

Not bad, but I think I’d have gone for the gusto and used a cap or RC between the coil and the FET gate… power on, cap is a short as it charges, which turns on the FET and bootstraps the chip… He’s right though… not bad.