question

dannen avatar image
dannen asked

Raspberrypower consumption

Hi!

Does anyone know the rough power consumption of a Raspberry Pi 3B+ running Venus OS?

And is it possible to disable for exampel: HDMI or Bluetooth or downclock to lower the power draw?


Also, if using mobile wifi hotspot on iPhone, Will Venus OS automatically reconnect after loosing connection?

Raspberry Pi
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8 Answers
Kevin Windrem avatar image
Kevin Windrem answered ·

I measured my RPI 4 with the official 7" touchscreen running Venus OS at about 3 watts (screen blanked). I measured about an additional 2 watts for two VE.Direct USB adapters, one MK3 USB adapter and a CANable USB CAN-bus adapter.

The RPI 3B+ should be less but don't know by how much.

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trygvelu avatar image
trygvelu answered ·

The information here gives a clue: https://www.raspberrypi.org/documentation/hardware/raspberrypi/power/README.md

The numbers are at 5.1V, so for the 3B+ (bareboard typical): 500mA * 5.1V = 2,55 watt

For RPi4 600mA => ~3W

On my boat I run multiplus (idle), smartsolar (idle), RPi 2 with DSI screen, CAN board, ADC board with tank interface, GPS, MK3 USB adapter, VE Direct USB adapter and a 4G router, and combined consumption is ~12W (0.9A @13.3V).

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ghostrider avatar image
ghostrider answered ·

With 2 VE.Direct USB adapters, GPS & WiFi on..I draw about 15w.

And yes, when disconnected, data is stored locally and then it is all uploaded when a saved wifi connection is restored.

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Elimac avatar image
Elimac answered ·

I have a small test bed running one RPi 3B with 2 USB connected Lithium BMSs and one USB/VE.direct connected 100/20 MPPT. I see power consumption between 2.5W and 3W on the output of the 5V DC/DC converter that powers it.

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pulquero avatar image
pulquero answered ·

On my setup, RPi 3B+ with 1 USB VE.direct and WiFi consumes about 2W. I wrote a node-RED flow to reduce VRM logging frequency when the MPPT controller is off to try to save some more power.

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pulquero avatar image
pulquero answered ·

I've managed to further reduce power consumption by having a node-RED flow that turns wifi on/off overnight using 'connmanctl enable/disable wifi'. This can be a bit annoying when wanting to work on the pi 'outside hours', so I have further written a BLE GATT server that allows me to also toggle wifi on/off via bluetooth.

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nick-a avatar image
nick-a answered ·

My pi zero 2W uses about 1.5W with 3 usb dongels attached + wifi.

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pulquero avatar image
pulquero answered ·

I found that turning the usb bus off (writing 0 to /sys/devices/platform/soc/3f980000.usb/buspower) reduces the power consumption to around 1W. This can be used to save power overnight.

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