Sparkfun Thing Plus nRF9160 configurable for uA current draw?

Hello CircuitDojo Community,

I am looking for some insight into a low power use case for Sparkfun Thing Plus nRF9160 dev kit. My question: is this circuit configurable via jumpers, traces which by design may be cut, or firmware settable configs to draw very low currents? By “very low”, current within a factor of four of the nRF9160 lowest deep sleep current specified?

This floor current I seek works out to the range of 2uA to 6uA.

The Sparkfun Thing Plus schematic at https://cdn.sparkfun.com/assets/5/7/c/a/c/nRF9160_Thing_Plus.pdf shows everything that’s going on circuit wise. But I do not see chip enable lines on all the ICs external to the Nordic SiP. While I could test with no SIM card installed, it looks like it might be difficult to power down external flash, and also power down the GPS antenna related part U4.

Since low power experiments, even on smaller boards like this one, involve much work and many steps I want to ask this question up front. At least I can find out whether I am “barking up the wrong tree”, in terms of finding public hardware on which I can delve further into battery based, nRF9160 designs.

Thanks ahead of time for any help the community can offer!

• Ted

Good evening jaredwolff,

No worries, thank you much for the fast succinct reply. I’m sure some teams have figured out how to buillt a microamp circuit around the nRF9160, but this past week I seem to be hitting something of a holy grail in terms of practical battery-friendly 9160 based designs.

I’ll continue the work and search this end, and watch for updates on your nRF9160 Feather kit. Good weekend, Jared!

• Ted