TL;DR: boost converter happy with AAA-type input, after all A while ago, I tested how Anelok behaved at low batter voltages: http://lists.en.qi-hardware.com/pipermail/discussion/2015-March/010832.html
The result was that it did reasonably well at anything we could expect from a CR2032 cell, but would become unstable at 1.4 V, which is uncomfortably close to the best-case voltage an AAA cell would provide. I couldn't quite explain why this was so, given that the boost converter is specified for operation with a battery voltage as low as 0.8 V. While I lay sleepless last night, it finally hit me: it's Q1 again ! Let's look at http://downloads.qi-hardware.com/people/werner/anelok/tmp/power-tree.pdf to see what's going on: The battery voltage is applied before Q1. The purpose of Q1 is to disconnect the battery if USB provides power. Q1 is a FET with a gate threshold voltage of about 1.0 V. If the battery voltage is at or below that gate threshold voltage, the FET will not conduct at all. If the battery voltage is only a little higher, it will conduct, but reluctantly. According to the data sheet [1], we need at least 1.2 V before it will admit the sort of current the boost converter needs at such a voltage. Worse, at that point it still has a resistance of > 1 Ohm, so we will need an even higher voltage before things can work. So I re-ran the experiment, with the current firmware, which may behave slightly differently than the March version. Again, I let Anelok boot, then turned it on, and entered the login-setup screen. The results are pretty much like the previous ones: Vbat Ibat Pbat Comment (V) (mA) (mW) ------- ------- ------- ------------------------------------------------- 2.4 14.6 35.0 Lab reference condition 2.3 15.4 35.4 2.2 16.3 35.9 2.1 17.3 36.3 2.0 18.4 36.8 Boot at 2.1 V, then lower 1.9 19.6 37.2 1.8 21.1 38.0 1.7 22.8 38.8 1.6 25.0 40.0 1.5 30 45 1.4 50 70 1.3 33 42.9 display is noticeably dim 1.2 - - turns off At 2.0 V and lower, Anelok would no longer boot. This is the work of the battery-guzzling boot loader that doesn't (yet) have the decency of at least turning on the boost converter. The fix for this is to boot at 2.1 V, proceed to the setup menu (the boost converter is now active), then dial the voltage down. That way, I made it down to 1.4 V without visible issues, but with the power consumption already going through the roof - a bad omen. At 1.3 V the display got quite dim (also, notice the current drop - this is the boost converter losing control of the situation). I didn't test to what extent the device would be able to do anything else but display that list, e.g., decrypt keys, scroll, etc. So this confirms the old measurements. Then I moved my "battery" past Q1, so that it would directly feed the boost converter. Again, the same ritual: Vbat Ibat Pbat Comment (V) (mA) (mW) ------- ------- ------- ------------------------------------------------- 2.1 17.2 36.1 2.0 18.2 36.4 Boot at 2.1 V, then lower 1.9 19.4 36.9 1.8 20.7 37.3 1.7 22.2 37.7 1.6 23.9 38.2 1.5 26.0 39.0 1.4 28.3 39.6 1.3 31.3 40.7 1.2 34.9 41.9 1.1 39 43 1.0 46 46 0.9 56 50 0.8 61 49 normal operation, slight flicker when scrolling 0.7 58 41 flickers when scrolling account list 0.6 45 27 display is noticeably dim; dies in crypto 0.5 27 14 display very dim; powers down when interacting Now, that's much nicer, isn't it ? :-) While performance at higher voltages is nearly identical to what we had before, the battery power increases only slowly as the voltage decreases, and the problems only begin at voltages that would signal the imminent death of a real AAA cell anyway. So this means that the boost converter works as expected for simulated AAA-type conditions. Q1 will either have to move to the 3.3 V side of the converter in a AAA-based design, or maybe get replaced with a dedicated switch chip that has generally nicer properties. One quick note about the points at which the device failed at extremely low voltages: while testing the latest power-saving features with a CR2032 cell, I found that, while Anelok would turn on nicely also after several days, it would only make it past decryption in the first few days. The steps are as follows: 1) in standby, screen is dark 2) turn on, logo appears, then the login screen 3) enter "PIN" 4) generate the shared secret key (this is computationally expensive) 5) display the list of accounts. For this, each record is accessed multiple times, and decrypted each time 6) when scrolling the whole display process is repeated frequently, with data transfers to the OLED The battery was strong enough to make it to 4) but then died while calculating the key. I solved this by displaying a progress indicator that consists of only a few pixels, so the display consumes much less power than if I let it show the last state of the login screen. This way, I got all the way to 5), I then still had it fail when scrolling (6). Scrolling the account list is particularly inefficient because many records are decrypted unnecessarily, and the transfer to the display is done by bit-banging GPIOs and busy-waiting between changes. Using the SPI hardware in the chip should allow Anelok to take little naps during display updates, which will probably be enough to make their power consumption quite bearable. This is something further down the to do list. I also tried to improve decryption activity by implementing a kind of lazy evaluation, but to my surprise, this only killed the device faster :-( Well, in the end, Anelok should probably just decrypt the list once and then cache it. Another to do item. - Werner [1] http://www.diodes.com/datasheets/ds31784.pdf _______________________________________________ Qi Hardware Discussion List Mail to list (members only): [email protected] Subscribe or Unsubscribe: http://lists.en.qi-hardware.com/mailman/listinfo/discussion
