BBB minimal power consumption or sleep mode support?

GoogleGroups
1

I am considering BBB for a solar-powered application and can’t find many power consumption measurements. The figures in the System Reference Manual are with loads of power hungry things hanging on to the BBB…

Has anyone made measurements on how low the power consumption can go when running from a single LiPo/LiFePo4 cell using the integrated PMIC? For my use the HDMI framer & output can be permanently disabled and CPU frequency can be scaled down to 250MHz or so easily. I won’t need the USB either so 5V not needed.

Another option would be to have a MCU like MSP430 watching for events and kicking the BBB up as needed. For this to work, it would be great to use sleep mode (instead of boot/shutdown) but apparently the OMAP PM kernel is still a separate project and the suspend/resume is not available in Ångström and other ready-made images at least.

  • Vaizki
2

Did you look here?

http://circuitco.com/support/index.php?title=BeagleBoneBlack

Did you look here?

https://github.com/CircuitCo/BeagleBone-Black/blob/master/BBB_SRM.pdf?raw=true

Current consumption will vary based in processor speed and what you are doing at the time. Unplugging HDM will help. Running something lighter than Linux will also help. If you don’t need USB host, that will allow the PMIC battery interface to be used to power the board. You can find information on that at the link above.

Gerald

3

What do you consider to be something lighter? Any pointers?

Johan

4

An OS other than Linux. Something like base code found in Starterware or QNX, Something that can go to sleep waiting for an event and not in a loop.

Gerald

5

Yes I did check those resources. The SRM has a figure of 350mA for idling Linux kernel and HDMI monitor, USB drive, USB hub etc etc. Was just wondering if anyone has measured how low idle would be with the cpu scaled down and no peripherals connected.

And yes I intend to use the battery interface and don’t need anything on the host USB port either.

I put in my order for a couple of BBBs and will test this myself then. I will provide numbers when I get them.

And as a note, having working suspend / resume easily accessible to BBB users would be a great thing for many battery powered projects. Apparently this m3 firmware is being worked on and things happening on the kernel side too? Looking forward to it.

  • Vaizki