Sleep Mode for the Wemos D1 Mini

The key to using solar power in an Internet of Things project is to put the microcontroller unit into sleep modeafter the sensors are read and the data posted to your IoT server. The NodeMCU and the Wemos D1 WiFi, a larger profile that mimics the Arduino UNO form, reliably woke from deep sleep. So far, the Adafruit HUZZAH fails to wake after 20 or 30 sleep cycles. I’m still working on the HUZZAH but the letter carrier just brought a package with three Wemos D1 Mini ESP8266 devkits and an OLED display shield.

Would the D1 Mini also work well with deep sleep? Answering that question had to wait until I checked out the OLED display.

The D1 Mini devkits are supplied with both male and female headers. You must install the female headers if you want to use the OLED shield as a plug-in unit. Make sure you install the headers on the correct side so that the shields will stack with correct connections.

Both Adafruit and Sparkfun have Arduino libraries for this display. The Sparkfun library loaded easily and the examples brought up bright, clear images.

The next step was to make a DIY shield to mount BMP180 and HT21D sensors. The BMP180 measures atmospheric pressure and temperature. The HTU21D measures temperature and humidity. [I will post some photos in a week.] It makes a nice compact little cube with the sensor shield stacked between the D1 Mini and the OLED.

Having proven the OLED display, I removed it and set about to put the D1 Mini and sensor shield into deep sleep. There were some problems doing this. When the ESP8266 wakes up, it needs to be reset to restart execution of the firmware. The ESP8266 provides a signal on pin D0 to do this so D0 must be connected to the Reset pin. However, this connection sometimes interferes with putting the ESP8288 into programming mode and must be opened to reprogram the chip.

I also ran into some problems when power was removed while the chip was in deep sleep.

After getting the chip to sleep and wake up I ran some current tests. The D1 Mini drew an average of 80mA when awake and 2.4mA when asleep. The D1 Mini has a small red LED that lights when the board is powered. I pulled the LED off the board with a pair of pliers. That dropped the sleep current down to 70µA.  This makes the D1 Mini look like a very good choice for solar powered IoT projects.