Any plan to offer Power Switches?

WisBlock
#1

Hi - I’m curious if there is any plan to offer power button for the WisBlock Base family?

One of my biggest challenges is that RAK hardware doesn’t have any kind of on/off power switch, and therefore just uses up battery indefinitely, unless a power switch is manually wired into the battery.

I’d really love to have a power switch that doesn’t require soldering, because this adds a ton of time to device assembly.

I understand these devices are super low power, but for mobile battery powered applications, it means that the battery is draining when the device is not in use. This combined with the slow, fixed charging rate makes batteries 1000mah+ more difficult to use.

#2

Welcome to RAK forum @jcw122 ,

I am not confident that there will be a switch by default on all WisBlock Baseboards in our WisBlock Roadmap.

However, we have one model that has a switch selector for battery type. That is the RAK19001 Dual IO Baseboard. You can use this switch as an ON/OFF switch.

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#3

I see, interesting. Even a soft-off button would be really useful. Thanks for the answer.

#4

If you’re looking for a power button or similar feature to be added to a specific hardware product like the WisBlock Base family from RAK, the best course of action is to directly reach out to RAK Wireless. They can provide you with the most up-to-date information on their products, potential upcoming features, and any plans to address the power button issue you mentioned.

#5

Rakwireless sells several devices (modules) that allow software shutdown. For example, this is the RAK14002 (WisBlock Touch Sensor Module)
All microcontrollers have a software “shutdown” function. In this state, they practically do not consume electricity. That is, the consumption is less than the leakage currents of the battery. I do this - I connect the infrared control module (or magnetometer) and program it as a power switch (turning the microcontroller off).
For Nordic nRF52, this function is very simple, namely:
NRF_POWER->SYSTEMOFF = 1;

You can turn it on with the reset button =)
PS Of course, we must take into account the consumption of the controller’s motherboard, but it is also small.