Mandatory OSS project plug: If you want to get your Raspberry Pi communicating securely with other computers, even over a public network, I wrote a Python library for that!:
Raspberry Pi Zero – Conserve power and reduce draw to 30mA
51–60 of 90 posts
Re: Raspberry Pi Zero – Conserve power and reduce draw to 30mA
#52Ok, it has low power consumption... no eth, no wifi, no usb... how do you communicate and what for? Running on batteries for two days and manually coping data from sd card?
Re: Raspberry Pi Zero – Conserve power and reduce draw to 30mA
#53Why are we even using a Raspberry Pi for battery powered projects... 30 mA draw is so high you'll be changing batteries every 2 days, and that is without doing anything. Compare that to f.e. a normal phone chipset with deep sleep, which draws about 9 mA with a cellular connection, or .1-.2 mA in flight mode. Or, if you just use the Pi for sensor readings, get a proper microcontroller, where current is measured in mic…
For someone like me who has only just started playing with microcontrollers thanks to the Arduino and RasPi and has never touched/played with anything else.. could you give any suggestions/links on what I should consider using for sensors? I have a bunch of "nodes" I need to make, each one has a single sensor (temperature, moisture, light, or distance using a sonic sensor) that will send back to a Raspberry Pi base s…
The MSP430 is renowned for low power and will idle (i.e. suspended waiting for interrupts) at microamps.
Architecturally it's a 16 bit Von Neumann architecture at up to 16MHz with a remarkably elegant ISA and extensions to let it address more memory. Most interestingly, some devices have 64kB or 128kB of FRAM --- non-volatile RAM which operates at SRAM speeds! And because it's a Von Neumann architecture you can load programs off disk into it, which lets you do some cool stuff. (I ported Alan Cox's Fuzix to one.) Of course, an SD card will use loads more RAM than the CPU itself.
I believe you can run one with no external components whatsoever. Hook it up to 0V and 3.3V and it'll run at 8MHzish on its internal oscillator.
Re: Raspberry Pi Zero – Conserve power and reduce draw to 30mA
#54Why are we even using a Raspberry Pi for battery powered projects... 30 mA draw is so high you'll be changing batteries every 2 days, and that is without doing anything. Compare that to f.e. a normal phone chipset with deep sleep, which draws about 9 mA with a cellular connection, or .1-.2 mA in flight mode. Or, if you just use the Pi for sensor readings, get a proper microcontroller, where current is measured in mic…
For someone like me who has only just started playing with microcontrollers thanks to the Arduino and RasPi and has never touched/played with anything else.. could you give any suggestions/links on what I should consider using for sensors? I have a bunch of "nodes" I need to make, each one has a single sensor (temperature, moisture, light, or distance using a sonic sensor) that will send back to a Raspberry Pi base s…
There are good answers already, here is my suggestion : once you are confortable with Arduino, look into using just the microcontroller (for example the ATMega328p of the Uno), and solder it on a protoboard with your sensors. You use the exact same code, you can easily load it via an Arduino (beware, you need an Arduino with a DIP microcontroller you can remove). Look up "Bareduino", that's the spirit.
Then you can have a look to smaller microcontroller (if your project allows it), for example the ATTiny family. You can get to ~10/20uA consumption when using deep sleep and only reading sensors once a while.
Re: Raspberry Pi Zero – Conserve power and reduce draw to 30mA
#55Earlier quoted context omitted.
Kinda unrelated to the whole Rpi discussion, but the SOC of any phone that runs Android would do. If that is Linux'y enough for you then it could be a solution. The problem is sourcing the SOCs. Spreadtrum makes some nice chips that include app processor, cellular, WiFi, Bluetooth, etc. for ~7$ but they're not for sale if you're not an ODM. This is a great article [1] about how Chinese SOC manufacturers and Chinese I…
I thougth you were thinking of ~dumbphones, but sure enough any smartphone these days is exceptional in most features. Just today I saw a chinese dual core smartphone phone for 34$... The thing is that unless you're already in the know you can't repurpose the board. ps: funny, just an hour ago I was trying to flash an old nexus s with CM*.
On the higher end you have last gen quad core Intel Atom Tablets with Windows 10, 2gb ram, USB, bluetooth, wifi and 8'' touch screen for 80$ [1].
The price of hardware in China is beyond amazing - honestly I could run a laptop off those specs with a slightly larger better screen (assuming I don't need to compile C++ :D)
[1] http://www.banggood.com/Cube-iWork8-Ultimate-32GB-Intel-Cher...
Re: Raspberry Pi Zero – Conserve power and reduce draw to 30mA
#56Earlier quoted context omitted.
For someone like me who has only just started playing with microcontrollers thanks to the Arduino and RasPi and has never touched/played with anything else.. could you give any suggestions/links on what I should consider using for sensors? I have a bunch of "nodes" I need to make, each one has a single sensor (temperature, moisture, light, or distance using a sonic sensor) that will send back to a Raspberry Pi base s…
In general the mbed has the better options for low power , but if you prefer the arduino, this would be a good starting point: http://jeelabs.org/tag/lowpower/ And if you want a long-range, low-power wireless connection - use LoRa , There's a driver here: http://www.airspayce.com/mikem/arduino/RadioHead/classRH__RF...
How have you found the mbed OS tools/community/documentation to be? I've played around a bit with Arduino but I'm interested in checking mbed out.
Re: Raspberry Pi Zero – Conserve power and reduce draw to 30mA
#57To put this in perspective, 30mA costs about $0.15 / year at typical US electric prices. 500mA is $2.50. A tiny draw regardless, but probably a lot more significant if you're running on batteries.
Re: Raspberry Pi Zero – Conserve power and reduce draw to 30mA
#58Why are we even using a Raspberry Pi for battery powered projects... 30 mA draw is so high you'll be changing batteries every 2 days, and that is without doing anything. Compare that to f.e. a normal phone chipset with deep sleep, which draws about 9 mA with a cellular connection, or .1-.2 mA in flight mode. Or, if you just use the Pi for sensor readings, get a proper microcontroller, where current is measured in mic…
The Pi (and Arduino) is a gateway drug, imo. As a software guy, I don't think I'd have ever gotten into circuit design or hardware hacking of any sort until I brought a Pi B and Arduino Uno.
For fun, first-time projects, it's a lot easier to have someone write a Python script and go, rather than breadboard a circuit and write in a more obscure, less-abstracted language.
Re: Raspberry Pi Zero – Conserve power and reduce draw to 30mA
#59Earlier quoted context omitted.
Esp8266 wifi/micro module. You can program it in lua!
Yeah, ESP8266 is a good choice for IoT projects. It supports quite a few different languages, I think the most recent addition was BASIC. It's very cheap as well (have seen people talking about prices as low as $3). http://www.esp8266.com Also worth knowing that the successor to the ESP8266, the ESP32, is currently in beta testing: https://hackaday.com/2015/11/06/the-latest-best-wifi-module-... https://twitter.com/ha…
You can order them for about US$3 per unit, or $2.85 if you order 10 from BangGood.[1]
You can get them for even cheaper directly from Chinese distributors.
Banggood, DealExtreme and AlieExpress are convenient and ship worldwide, but they are not the cheapest, although they are usually already quite cheap compared to most.
[1]:http://www.banggood.com/ESP8266-ESP-12E-Remote-Serial-Port-W...
Re: Raspberry Pi Zero – Conserve power and reduce draw to 30mA
#60Earlier quoted context omitted.
Have you tried a BeagleBone Black or any kind of BeagleBoard? What are you scaling RPi's for? Arduino and Raspberry pis strike me as toys compared to BBB's. BBBs are a lot less forgiving and require way more understanding of basic electronics to do anything with, even as simple as lighting an external LED will break your BBB if you didn't do it right, but they seem more powerful in terms of what you can do (although…
Wait, how can you break the BBB with a LED? I'm going to use one for a LEGO robot, and I'd like to not fry it :P
Our team has personally blown through three of them through shorting faults. It's our fault, but the BBB is a pretty tender beast.