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Tutorials & Examples
Basic
Sleep

Sleep

Basic sleep

There are several methods to make your device sleep. First we cover the basic sleep. Similar to delay() used in Arduino, sleep will yield your program until the time is over. Important is that the all microcontroller functions keep running. Also the LoRa and LTE modems can be used directly (without re-attaching) after regular sleep.

import time

time.sleep(1) #sleep 1 second

time.sleep_ms(10) #sleep 10 milliseconds

time.sleep_us(10) #sleep 10 microseconds

Similar to yield(), in MicroPython we use:











    
import machine 
machine.idle()








    


Power saving




To save power, we can also put the controller into sleep modes using the following examples.


Light sleep


The machine.sleep() command will put the controller into a light sleep mode. WiFi and BLE are switched off, but the main CPU and RAM are still running. the LoRa, SigFox and LTE modems are stopped as well and have to be re-initialized after wakeup. The controller will continue running the code after waking up. GPIO states are also conserved. Setting the second argument to True will restore the WiFi and BLE after wakeup.














    
import machine
import time
print("this will be printed before: " + str(time.ticks_ms()))
machine.sleep(1000*10)
print("this will be printed after 10 seconds: "+ str(time.ticks_ms()))








    


Deep sleep




Deepsleep disables, next to the lightsleep, the main CPU and RAM. This leaves only a low power coprocessor and RTC timer running. After waking up, the board will start again at boot.py, just like with pressing the reset button. The CPU counter (time.ticks()) will continue to count however! You can also leave the brackets empty to sleep indefinetely, until the reset button is pressed, the power is removed, or an external wake up signal (interrupt) is provided. Be aware that the LTE modem will remain switched on unless you actively switch off its power, or use its own power saving modes.








    
import machine
print("Wake up")
machine.deepsleep(1000) #deepsleep 1 second
print("this will never get printed!")








    
Wake up reason


Sometimes, we want to know the reason the board woke up, to differentiate the difference between pressing the reset button and other ways of waking up from sleep. Try the example below:








    
import machine
import time
wake_reason = machine.wake_reason()
print("Device running for: " + str(time.ticks_ms()) + "ms")
if wake_reason == machine.PWRON_RESET:
    print("Woke up by reset button")
elif wake_reason == machine.PIN_WAKE:
    print("Woke up by external pin (external interrupt)")
elif wake_reason == machine.ULP_WAKE:
    print("Woke up by ULP (capacitive touch)")
elif wake_reason == machine.TOUCHPAD_WAKE:
    print("Woke up by touchpad")

machine.deepsleep(1000*60) #sleep for 1 minute
print("This will never be printed")








    

        
Note: Using deepsleep() will also stop the USB connection. Be wary of that when trying to upload new code to the device!