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Best Low-Power Microcontrollers for Battery-Powered IoT Projects

ariajames_121

Hey everyone,

I'm new here and excited to be part of this community! I'm working on a battery-powered IoT project and trying to find the best low-power microcontroller for the job. The goal is to maximize battery life while still having enough processing power to handle sensor data and communicate wirelessly (BLE, Wi-Fi, or LoRa).

I’ve been looking into options like the Nordic nRF52 series and STM32L series, but I’d love to hear from those with hands-on experience. What MCUs have worked well for you in low-power applications? Any tips on optimizing power consumption?

Looking forward to your thoughts.

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  • Hi,

    Lowest power in standby might not be all too relevant, since a lot more power is required for processing and transmitting (or receiving).

    You probably need to do some back-of-envelope calculations (i.e. do it in Excel or similar) to see how long you think your project can run for, based on the battery you plan to use, frequency of transmissions and so on. The microcontroller datasheets will specify the current consumption in the various microcontroller active and sleep modes.

    You might find that the difference between (say) 0.5 uA and 1 uA non-active-state consumption might be "in the noise" - whether that's the case or not, only you will know once you do basic modeling.

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  • Hi,

    Lowest power in standby might not be all too relevant, since a lot more power is required for processing and transmitting (or receiving).

    You probably need to do some back-of-envelope calculations (i.e. do it in Excel or similar) to see how long you think your project can run for, based on the battery you plan to use, frequency of transmissions and so on. The microcontroller datasheets will specify the current consumption in the various microcontroller active and sleep modes.

    You might find that the difference between (say) 0.5 uA and 1 uA non-active-state consumption might be "in the noise" - whether that's the case or not, only you will know once you do basic modeling.

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  • in reply to shabaz

    That’s a great point! I hadn’t fully considered how processing and transmission could outweigh standby power consumption. I’ll definitely do some rough calculations to estimate the overall power usage based on my battery capacity and transmission frequency. Looking at the datasheets for active and sleep current should give me a clearer picture of what to expect. You’re also right that the difference between 0.5 µA and 1 µA in standby might not be as significant as it seems in the bigger picture. I’ll model a few different scenarios and see what makes the most sense for my project.