Low power Arduino menu using tcmenu library
In this article we’ll discuss building a low power Arduino menu using tcMenu library. We will use a TFT screen and a rotary encoder connected to a PCF8574 device. The device will be SAMD MKR board.
I’ve picked this choice purposely, because it’s non-trivial, and requires a lot of digging to make sure power usage is a low as possible.
Running an Arduino menu on battery
If the device can be powered from the mains, then power usage is probably not the biggest issue. However. if we want to use as little power as possible because the application needs to run on batteries and is limited in size, then we must avoid polling and put the chip into low power states when not in immediate use. For menu projects, where there’s always user input, this is a bit more complex. Let’s investigate each component in more detail. Although out of the box Arduino is not setup to be power efficient (loop based polling), our libraries can counter this and make battery running possible.
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