Power consumption reduction

Ripple
 
Posts: 8
Joined: Mon Dec 08, 2014 12:04 pm

Power consumption reduction

Mon Dec 08, 2014 12:12 pm

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!

Vonger
 
Posts: 896
Joined: Sun Oct 19, 2014 6:00 am

Re: Power consumption reduction

Tue Dec 09, 2014 1:23 pm

If all disabled, at least it cost 120(uboot) 140mA(openwrt)
Wifi on it is 200mA

Ripple
 
Posts: 8
Joined: Mon Dec 08, 2014 12:04 pm

Re: Power consumption reduction

Tue Dec 09, 2014 9:48 pm

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!

Ripple
 
Posts: 8
Joined: Mon Dec 08, 2014 12:04 pm

Re: Power consumption reduction

Mon Dec 29, 2014 5:58 pm

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

Greenwire-Elektronik
 
Posts: 101
Joined: Thu Dec 04, 2014 6:31 am

Re: Power consumption reduction

Mon Dec 29, 2014 9:29 pm

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.
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