It is interesting that you first described hardware/software solution you chose - "I'm working on a project based on ..." and only then described the project goal itself, instead of describing project as "I am working on a project to do X".Hello everyone,
I’m working on a project based on a Raspberry Pi Pico 2 W, programmed in C/C++ using the Pico SDK and Visual Studio Code.
At the moment, the power consumption is around 100 mA, which seems quite high for my use case, and I would like to reduce it as much as possible.
Project description
My goal is very simple:
1. Acquire data from an AD7193 ADC via SPI
2. Transmit the data via BLE (Bluetooth Low Energy, no Wi-Fi)
3. Then go into deep sleep / low-power mode
If your requirement is very low power then Pico 2W is IMO the wrong choice as it was not designed for that. It is easy to use and great for many things except low power. Yes you can certainly devise clever workarounds to compensate for wrong choice but you can also chose solution best suited for the project instead of the other way around
There are plenty of other choices for low power chips that can do BLE and SPI and draw single or two digit uA average current in sleep (with BLE still enabled). Many are from China but I would suggest nrf52840 or newer nrf54L15. nrf52840 is older and still widely used so there is plenty of information and tools available by now and plenty of boards made by 3rd parties and it also runs arduino and micro/circuitpython. As for specific cheap board that draws <5uA in idle I would suggest the SuperMini - e.g. the red one from Tenstar Robot described here https://github.com/joric/nrfmicro/wiki/ALternatives
The pair of two boards are for less then $6 on aliexpress. It is also sold in pairs because one target use case is making split bluetooth keyboard from them. It also has lipo charger and 3.3V regulator for powering external stuff (like keyboard leds) that can be turned off for low power.
There are also plenty boards from Adafruit, Sparkfun and others (like the nice!nano 2) if you don't trust cheap stuff from aliexpress.
Statistics: Posted by fanoush — Wed Jan 28, 2026 9:07 pm