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Power consumption reduction

Posted: Mon Dec 08, 2014 12:12 pm
by Ripple
Hello,

I was wondering what is the power consumption of this little gadget? The blog says it should be about 250 mA on a fully booted device (150mA without WiFi), but this still seems a bit high for such a small device with a battery powered application. So I was wondering, is there a way to decrease the power drain somehow down to about 50 mA or less?

A) Disable WiFi
B) ???
C) ???
D) ???

Any suggestions?
Best regards!

Re: Power consumption reduction

Posted: Tue Dec 09, 2014 1:23 pm
by Vonger
If all disabled, at least it cost 120(uboot) 140mA(openwrt)
Wifi on it is 200mA

Re: Power consumption reduction

Posted: Tue Dec 09, 2014 9:48 pm
by Ripple
Hello!

Are you sure that's the minimum possible current? Can it be lowered any by downscaling the MPU frequency (i.e. by using a certain cpufreq governor)?

Regards!

Re: Power consumption reduction

Posted: Mon Dec 29, 2014 5:58 pm
by Ripple
So... any ideas?

I've tested the device, and it seems to consume 210 mA by default and 130 mA with wifi and networking disabled. It's still funny because the router TP-Link MR3020 will only use 60 mA in the same configuration. So is there a way to reduce the current consumption of vocore down to that level?

Cheers!

EDIT:
210 mA with WiFi on
130 mA with WiFi off
310 mA with WiFi on and 100% CPU use
210 mA with WiFi off and 100% CPU use

CPU usage was increased by using this shell command:
# cat /dev/urandom > /dev/null

Re: Power consumption reduction

Posted: Mon Dec 29, 2014 9:29 pm
by Greenwire-Elektronik
You could check for functions you do not use (running timers). You also could change all GPIOs to Inputs or Outputs High. But this should be done carefully.