Thank you! I had assumed it had something to do with the I/O pins. It
seems I was barking up the wrong tree. I turned the brownout detector off
and current consumption dropped to less than 1 microamp. Thanks so much, I
should now be able to run this on a battery for the shelf life of the battery.
Thanks!
John Hansen
At 02:02 PM 1/21/2002 -0600, you wrote:
{Quote hidden}>You should be able to get it down to a couple of microamps.
>
>It is very easy to consume a few extra microamps. To get down to the
>minumum, you need to turn off the brownout detector, make sure than you have
>not left any peripherals running -- such as analog voltage reference, and
>take great care with each and every I/O pin.
>
>An input pin that's left to float will (sometimes, and not always repatable)
>float into the linear region, which will cause both of its CMOS transistors
>to turn on, wasting a few microamps. Either connect it to ground or Vcc
>with a resistor (1M is enough), or if it's not connected to anything at all,
>make it an output. It doesn't matter whether it's high or low, as long as
>it's not somewhere in the middle.
>
>An output pin that is driving any sort of load will consume power. This
>includes pullup/down resistors and devices which you have powered down. You
>need to look carefully at each one and make sure it's not sourcing current
>to something.
>
>I often find it helpful to separately measure the current through Vcc and
>GND to the PIC. This will give you a clue as to whether you have a pin
>that's pulling up or down. If you have an output that's pulling down
>against a pullup resistor, you'll see more current through Vcc than Gnd. If
>you have a high output going to a powered-down chip, then you'll see more
>current through Vcc.
>
>
>
> > {Original Message removed}