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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,

    Both Nordic Semi and Ambiq micro series are known for their low power chips for Bluetooth. But it varies from case to case which one might be suitable for your application.

    For example, I was working on testing low-power design on Nordic nRF52 series and found that it could reach upto 6uA while the device is advertising on BLE channels.

    I achieved this low power by increasing the adv interval, reduce the RAM usage by disabling unused RAM, disable unused paripherals, using on chip DC-DC regulator to power the chip instead on LDO and using external low-freq crystal to read low power design. This can be verified using Nordic PPK2 or similar. 

    You can try to upload the hex file to your nRF52 based board and check yourself.

    Low Power consumption for nRF52 series of devices - Nordic Q&A - Nordic DevZone - Nordic DevZone

    You can also look at other vendors in Bluetooth space if you want to have a look. For example Silcon labs, STM32 etc. If you need WiFi + BLE on a single chip and want to reduce overall BOM ESP32 can also be a look.

    So totally depends on your application.

  • in reply to embeddedguy

    Thanks so much for sharing your experience with the nRF52 series! Your tips on optimizing power consumption are really helpful, and I appreciate the detailed breakdown. I’ll definitely explore these options and also check out other vendors like Silicon Labs and STM32. Really appreciate your input!

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