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Sensor power control

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Published in 2017-7-4 13:29:54 | Show all floors |Read mode
Edited by ecolyx at 2017-7-4 13:33

Hi,
I've been playing with various sensors and controllers on the GPIO, using wiringPi library, uploading metrics to a graphite/carbon apache server.

Some of the sensors draw significant power (enough to affect battery life adversly for the project requirements).

Some of the sensors/controllers also affect each others readings if powered at the same time. For instance a solenoid affects a compass. Reading EC of a liquid requires generating a signal which will affect the voltage across a pH sensor.  And so on..

I want to be able to switch off the sensors between reads and save power.

It's relatively easy to power 3v3 sensors with a HIGH GPIO pin, but I am struggling with 5v sensors.

Is there any way to control the 5v supply, or is there a switchable 5v supply on the boards (particularly OPi One, or OPi 0+2, as they are models I am using), without additional circuitry?


Could I use a GPIO pin to ground the sensor on LOW, switching it off with HIGH?

Thanks for any ideas..

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Published in 2017-7-4 14:38:43 | Show all floors
You can control 5v power using MOSFET.

http://www.electronics-tutorials.ws/transistor/tran_7.html


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