Low-power system timer for power gating in duty-cycled or battery applications

This post is sponsored by Texas Instruments. Ideal for power gating in duty-cycled or battery-powered applications, Texas Instruments (TI) offers the TPL5111 Nano Timer. Consuming only 35nA, the low-power system timer can be used to enable and disable the power supply for a micro-controller or other system device, drastically reducing the overall system stand-by current during the sleep time. This power saving enables the use of significantly smaller batteries and makes the TPL5111 well suited for energy harvesting or wireless sensor applications. Available in a 6-pin SOT23 package, the TPL5111 provides selectable timing intervals from 100ms to 7200s. In addition, the TPL5111 has a novel One-shot feature where the timer will only assert its enable pulse for one cycle.