The Nordic Power Profiler Kit II is a great portable data logger for monitoring the power consumption of electrical devices. Here are the main features of this test tool,
- 200nA to 1A current measurement range with a resolution that varies between 100nA and 1mA
- Source mode and ampere meter mode
- Source mode includes built-in programmable regulator with a 0.8V to 5V output range and up to 1A current supply
- 100 ksps sampling rate (10 x greater than previous generation)
- Standalone unit
- 8 digital inputs for low-end logic analyzer support
- Measure instantaneous and average current on all Nordic DKs, in addition to custom boards
- Supported through nRF Connect for Desktop’s Power Profiler application
- Export measurement data for post processing (CSV to Excel)
The Nordic Power Profiler Kit II application can be installed in the Windows, Linux and MacOS Operating Systems.
The Nordic Power Profiler Kit II shown in the next picture,
The Nordic Power Profiler Kit II has a switch on/off button, a usb power only interface, a usb/data power interface, a logic analyzer interface with 8 channels and the current measurement interface. It also includes a set of cables for the logic analyzer interface and the corresponding cables for the current measurement port as shown in the next figure,
After installing the nRF Connect for Desktop application, open it and select it from the nRF Connect application menu highlighted below,
The Nordic Power Profiler Kit II will present its graphical user interface as shown below,
The block diagram of this system is shown below,
The Nordic Power Profiler Kit II has two modes of operation, either via source mode with current measurement capability,
or via current measurement only mode.
in the last mode the device has to be fed from an external voltage source to the load device under consideration.
In order to test the current measurement data logger in source mode with current measurement capability, a simple passive fixed value resistor like this one (910 Ohms) from DigiKey can be placed between the terminals at the output,
this is illustrated in the following picture,
The output voltage can be controlled using the graphical user interface slider (Under Set supply voltage) from 0.8 V to 5.0 V, in this case was adjusted to a constant voltage of 2.963 V. Under this output voltage source condition, the graphical user interface of the Nordic Application will display something similar to this depending on the application settings (In this case the vertical axis that display the amplitude of the current was locked to range to around 10 mA),
The statistical average of these current amplitude values of 3.34 mA is displayed along with the maximum value of 3.34 mA in the range of 1.723 Seconds under consideration within the graphical user interface which is adjustable. The electronic derived equivalent charge of 5.80mC is also displayed in the graphical user interface and calculated as,
Also another test that can be performed under this mode, is to place a variable potentiometer like this one from DigiKey at the output of the device as follows,
The potentiometer resistance can be changed in value by rotating it slowly to change the current being measured over a certain range as seen in the next video in real time in the Nordic application graphical user interface,
The Nordic Power Profiler Kit II is an excellent portable tool to characterize typical electronic devices, present and future generation of low power Internet of Things (IoT) devices.
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