Measure power consumption of Arduino projects

I am currently working on a remote Arduino project.

"Remote" includes Bluetooth and solar powered (LiPo backuped) power supply.

To ensure that my power supply is suitable I had to find a way to measure the power consumption of my project.

All you need is a Breadboard Power Supply Stick 5V/3.3V from Sparkfun.



You can plugin any power source from 6 to 12 V and this little gem outputs a selectable 5V or 3.3V regulated voltage.

The Arduino does have two pins (VIN & GND) which can be used as power supply too.

• I connected the VCC of the breadboard power supply to the VIN of the Arduino.
• I connected the GND of the Arduino to a jumper wire.
• I connected a jumper wire to the GND of the breadboard power supply.

Afterwards I connected the two jumper wires with each other to see if the Arduino is running.

To messure the power consumption I can connect a multimeter with the two jumper wires.

And get the minimum power consumtion:



And the maximum power consumtion:



Same with my Bluetooth & OLED project:



One important warning: If you want to measure the current choose a breakpoint after the current consumer!

You want to keep your multimeter.

Back to the test results:

27.5mA for the Arduino board and 81.5mA for my project.

So I need a 0.4Wh power supply for my project - (81.5mA * 5V * 24h) 9,78W for a whole day.

The six Sanyo eneloop (2000mA) LiPos might offer about 11W and will therefore cover more than 24h.

If you need any additional information feel free to post your question.

Maybe some will dig his/her old multimeter out and start playing with electronics again.

Thank you for posting the values I asked on the other thread.