Nordic makes some good products. When I was doing hardware design for a product that uses a battery my options for power profiling were either not to do it or spend some eye watering amount of money. Then I discovered Nordic makes the PPKII, a cost effective, highly accurate profiler with quite good software. I detect good things in store for the company just based on the quality of stuff they have been putting out.
blutack · 2h ago
The TinyCurrent or uCurrent can be used for this as well when paired with a scope with scpi. However, the ranges aren't dynamic which is annoying if you're using something a WiFi part where you're going from uA to 200mA.
The PPK2 is one of the best pieces of kit I have and it'd be worth it at 5x the price.
There's an unofficial Python library as well. I have power consumption tests running as part of my automated firmware test suite.
Neywiny · 3h ago
Looks like it switches different ranges. ST makes something similar that has similar dynamic range without switching. They use analog circuitry (op amps and junk) to compensate for the resistor drop, so the path is uninterrupted. I've had systems where the auto-ranging on a bench meter is enough to cause it to reset. I can't find a schematic for the PPKII (haven't looked too hard though) but if it's actually switching the supply, that can cause issues to devices downstream. Especially if that switching causes a voltage drop change.
readmodifywrite · 2h ago
It switches the detection range, but not the actual power supply. You can ramp from <5 uA up to 500 mA and back all you want. I haven't noticed any glitching on the actual supply.
Do they have nice open-source SDKs for these nice products?
vbezhenar · 4m ago
I'm working with NRF5 SDK. Most of its source is available (no idea if it's free software or not, but sources are there). The most glaring exception is softdevice - that's BLE implementation, it's huge binary blob, taking control over most CPU.
Their newer SDK based on Zephyr RTOS, I didn't work with it, but I think it's mostly open source as well.
monegator · 2h ago
> Nordic makes some good products
and godawful software. the SDK for their NRF52/3/4 is pure madness, i haven't even managed to set up the toolchain, documentation always out of date.
They used to have another toolchain for the older parts, but good luck setting it up now.
blutack · 2h ago
I'm sorry you've had a bad experience but I don't agree, I prefer it to the ST, TI and definitely the Microchip tooling. It's CLI first, like the Espressif and Pico tooling which is a big plus for some and not for others.
Also, no mandatory login walls for toolchains and datasheets gets them a lot of goodwill in my book.
monegator · 1h ago
I'm proficient with many MCU families.
Microchip tooling: download, double click, install, just works. Zero need for any framework, good bare metal support. a C project is an actual C project. Granted, if you use that MCC piece of shit you're in for a bad time, but going bare metal require zero effort, a single include file if you need to access peripherals, and you actually have documentation to do so.
ST tooling: sort of almost just works, more effort but you can still go bare metal with relative ease.
Current nordic: it's actually a zephir project, thousands of files to generate and compile. No options to go bare metal. (used to be possible with the older SDK, or so they tell me. Too bad i can't seem to be able to let a project compile with the old SDK, or set up the IDE for intellisense with the new SDK, but i haven't had enough time yet.)
Bonus: Espressif. At least their VSCode integration really just works. The peripherals are frustrating and severely bugged though and there can be supply chain issues, and that's the reason i'm looking at nordic for some BLE-enabled project, because the ESP32 parts won't cut it for this or that reason (usually the basic yet still bugged peripherals).
But i'm willing to put up with microchip's BLE modules again (i evaluated them several times over the years, always a disaster. But not the newer based on PIC32MZ, and the price have come down to be reasonable.) if the only option with nordic is the zephir monstruosity.
eschneider · 1h ago
I mean, you _can_ go bare metal with Nordic chips, but you'd definitely be swimming against the current. I'm not a fan of Zephyr, but it really wasn't that much trouble to put together a docker image that would let me spin up whatever version of the SDK I needed and then just build from the docker. Quite tolerable.
5ADBEEF · 1h ago
I don’t think most have this experience. Zephyr is the future.
flyingcircus3 · 2h ago
Segger Embedded Studio is a complete solution. One installer. You might need to pick an older version to go with an old SDK version, but its very straightforward.
https://n-fuse.co/devices/tinyCurrent-precision-low-Current-...
There's an unofficial Python library as well. I have power consumption tests running as part of my automated firmware test suite.
Schematics: https://www.nordicsemi.com/Products/Development-hardware/Pow...
Their newer SDK based on Zephyr RTOS, I didn't work with it, but I think it's mostly open source as well.
and godawful software. the SDK for their NRF52/3/4 is pure madness, i haven't even managed to set up the toolchain, documentation always out of date. They used to have another toolchain for the older parts, but good luck setting it up now.
Also, no mandatory login walls for toolchains and datasheets gets them a lot of goodwill in my book.
Microchip tooling: download, double click, install, just works. Zero need for any framework, good bare metal support. a C project is an actual C project. Granted, if you use that MCC piece of shit you're in for a bad time, but going bare metal require zero effort, a single include file if you need to access peripherals, and you actually have documentation to do so.
ST tooling: sort of almost just works, more effort but you can still go bare metal with relative ease.
Current nordic: it's actually a zephir project, thousands of files to generate and compile. No options to go bare metal. (used to be possible with the older SDK, or so they tell me. Too bad i can't seem to be able to let a project compile with the old SDK, or set up the IDE for intellisense with the new SDK, but i haven't had enough time yet.)
Bonus: Espressif. At least their VSCode integration really just works. The peripherals are frustrating and severely bugged though and there can be supply chain issues, and that's the reason i'm looking at nordic for some BLE-enabled project, because the ESP32 parts won't cut it for this or that reason (usually the basic yet still bugged peripherals).
But i'm willing to put up with microchip's BLE modules again (i evaluated them several times over the years, always a disaster. But not the newer based on PIC32MZ, and the price have come down to be reasonable.) if the only option with nordic is the zephir monstruosity.