Reducing Arduino’s Power Consumption Part 1

In part 1 of this 3 part series we look at how to use Arduino's built-in sleep modes to drastically cut down on power consumption to help you build projects with longer battery life. In part 2 of this series we will look at how to use power reduction registers and in part three we will look at some other ways to wake an Arduino up from sleep mode.

<avr/sleep.h> library: http://www.nongnu.org/avr-libc/user-manual/group__avr__sleep.html

//**********************Arduino Code***********************************
/*
Example program for using sleep modes in Arduino. This example code was used in a sleep mode tutorial video on the ForceTronics YouTube Channel.
This code is open for anybody to use at their own risk

The 5 different modes are:
     *     SLEEP_MODE_IDLE         -the least power savings
     *     SLEEP_MODE_ADC
     *     SLEEP_MODE_PWR_SAVE
     *     SLEEP_MODE_STANDBY
     *     SLEEP_MODE_PWR_DOWN
These are the arguments used to set the sleep mode in the function set_sleep_mode()
     */
     
#include <avr/sleep.h>

int led = 13; //variable for pin that the LED is on
int count = 0; //variable to control how many times LED blinks before sleep

void setup() {
   sleep_enable(); //enable the sleep capability
   set_sleep_mode(SLEEP_MODE_PWR_DOWN); //set the type of sleep mode. Default is Idle
   pinMode(led, OUTPUT); //set up the LED pin to output
}

void loop() {
  
  if(count < 4) { //For first four loops blink the LED
    digitalWrite(led, HIGH);   // turn the LED on (HIGH is the voltage level)
    delay(900);               // wait 
    digitalWrite(led, LOW);    // turn the LED off by making the voltage LOW
    delay(900);       // wait 
    count++; //increment count
  }
  else { //after blinking LED setup interrupt and then go to sleep. Note that sleep will only happen once since it is disabled in ISR
    attachInterrupt(0, interruptFunction, HIGH); 
    sleep_cpu(); //enter sleep mode. Next code that will be executed is the ISR when interrupt wakes Arduino from sleep
    count = 0; //Set the count back to zero 
  }
   
}

//This is the function called when the interrupt occurs (pin 2 goes high)
//this is often referred to as the interrupt service routine or ISR
//This cannot take any input arguments or return anything
void interruptFunction() {
 detachInterrupt(0); //this function call will turn the interrupt off
 sleep_disable(); //Disable the sleep mode so even if call to sleep is executed again it will be ignored
}