Reply To: Sleep code not working with Maxbotix 7389

I put your code into a “code snippet” to make it easier to read.

You’re listening to the sonar via SoftwareSerial. SoftwareSerial works by means of pin change interrupts. Pin change interrupts wake the board up. While the sonar is powered, it will continuously send out data. So if your sonar is continuously powered and continuously sending out data and you don’t explicitly stop listening and turn off those interrupts, your board will be immediately woken up by the sonar. I’m sorry. If I’d just thought a little harder I could have figured that out without seeing any code. Anyway, if you want to use your code mostly as-is and keep the sonar on all the time, remove the sonarSerial.begin(9600); from your setup and make it the first line of your readSonar() function. Then add sonarSerial.end(); just before the return of that same function. Doing that should prevent the interrupts from keeping the board awake any time except within that function.

I don’t think leaving the sonar continuously powered like that will help it to stay fog-free unless it actually is a “self-cleaning” module. The 7389 isn’t. Have you actually seen it make any difference? I don’t think we’ve ever even tried.

You’re not using ModularSensors, but for anyone who might be and notices the keep-awake issue with a MaxBotix, I created an issue for it here: https://github.com/EnviroDIY/ModularSensors/issues/303