Did I Actually Make It Worse?

A little while back I ripped the PIR and mystery chip out of one of these cheap night lights and dropped a microwave radar module in its place. It worked beautifully: much better sensitivity, sensible timeout, the whole thing tucked back into the original case like nothing had happened. But I had a sneaking suspicion I might have improved one thing and quietly ruined another. The radar module is always on. The PIR-and-mystery-chip combo, on the other hand, looked like it was doing something clever with sleep. So before I get smug about my mod, let’s actually measure what each version is pulling from the battery. Out comes the Nordic Power Profiler Kit II. The Original: LEDs On Power the supply on, start logging, and the LEDs immediately come up to greet me. It takes a moment to actually trigger because I’ve taped over the LDR (the night light flatly refuses to light up unless it thinks it’s dark), but once it triggers we’re sitting at about 80 mA, which matches the last time I…