Powering an ATtiny85 from the pull-up resistor of another device

Question

I have an interesting design challenge. Reed switch S1 is feeding pulses at a maximum of five per second into a 3.3 V microcontroller input. I want to halve the pulse rate. I don't have access to the 3.3 V supply so I hope to power the circuit from the original reed switch's pull-up resistor! This may be possible if I can keep the average current requirements low by putting the ATtiny85 to sleep between pulses from the reed switch, S1 below, and running at 1 MHz.

Figure 1. S1 is (normally) connected to SENSOR IN. I want to power an ATtiny85 from the pull-up resistor R2 and only pass every second pulse through by pulling J1-2 to ground by PB1.

The plan:

• Charge up C2 via R2 and D1. This has to provide adequate voltage stability to power the Tiny during the 10 ms pulses when PB1 pulls low.
• Configure PB2 as an interrupt and have S1 wake up the Tiny, check if it's an odd or even pulse and, if even, set PB1 to LOW for 10 ms.
• Go back to sleep.
• The Tiny should draw about 1 mA while awake running at 1 MHz. At 5% duty cycle I'd have a 50 uA average current resulting in an average voltage drop on R2 of 150 mV.

^{simulate this circuit – Schematic created using CircuitLab}

Figure 2. A crude simulation of the circuit. PWM1, etc. represents the duty-cycle of the ATtiny85 while PWM2, etc. represents PB1 pulling the J1-2 line low.

Figure 3. The results of the simulation.

The results are pretty much as expected but leave me with a few questions:

As drawn PB1 is connected to a line which is one diode-drop higher than the Tiny's V_CC. I can see two ways to address this: - Use a Schottky diode for D1 which will give several improvements including reducing the overvoltage on PB1. - Add a diode on PB1 input to match the voltage drop on D1. This isn't likely to help much as there should be little current flowing.

1. What's the best way to address the points above?
2. I've never run a micro as low as 2.3 V before. Are there any pitfalls I need to be aware of?

Many thanks.

Answer 1

Using a schottky for D1 is sensible. I haven’t had any problems running ATtiny micros at low voltage; the main issue would typically be interfacing to other devices but that seems to be handled here.

Answer 2

Powering an ATtiny85 from the pull-up resistor

I love the idea you propose, but would point out the following:

1. Using a Diode (conventional or Schottcky) to charge the supply capacitor is problematic. You have an ATTiny 45 I/O pin connected to the pullup resistor and this has an intrinsic diode from the output to the supply (VCC) for the MCU. See Figure 10-1 in the datasheet.... This provides another path to charge the supply capacitor, but use of this path might change charge times or predicted supply voltage.

2. If the MCU pulls the input pin down for too long, it's possible that the supply voltage could drop. Whether it would drop below a working voltage is unknown, but it's hard to deign for.

I would suggest the following might work for you:

1. Use a rechargeable battery such as the Maxwell ML 1220 battery, which is viable up to about 3.3V. The pullup resistor could provide the charge limit, and the battery will provide 1-2mA capability with relatively stable MCU voltage over 2.5V. This will reduce the needed capacitance to a more manageable level, with perhaps only 1uF required.

2. Use a FET to provide the pulldown signal into your interface, which will isolate the MCU I/O pin. There are plenty of low VGS(th) FETs available such as the BSS138.

3. The internal pullup on the ATTiny is all you need on the Reed relay input, you can turn it off once you sense the switch closure.

^{simulate this circuit – Schematic created using CircuitLab}

Answer 3

Mechanical switches have contact bounce, so this signal would need some conditioning. An ATTINY is a great solution for that and can work at a much lower frequency than 1MHz for this purpose.

But let's pretend for a moment that we've got the contemporary chips that were also available circa 1980. There still is a way to do it without the MCU, but for similar cost.

The circuit outputs every other pulse, and ensures that the pulses have a fixed width of 10ms.

The circuit is nanopower: \$I_Q<100{\rm\,\mu A}\$ at room temperature, and can run from R2=470R all the way to R2=1M. The value you chose, R2=3k, is good for noise immunity.

^{simulate this circuit – Schematic created using CircuitLab}

Note that CD4093B has Schmitt inputs.

D5 should have a voltage drop lower than Q1's Vbe or else the circuit may not initialize properly.

The waveform at SWOUT and SWIN would look as follows:

If one wished to be fancy, R1, R3 and R4 could be replaced with 1uA current sources, e.g. with LM334. This would increase the cost just for the fanciness factor, nothing more.

Diodes D2, D3, D4, D7 protect CMOS inputs from latch-up.