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Hacker mods an M1 Mac mini to receive power over Ethernet instead of AC

inferse.com

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Re: Hacker mods an M1 Mac mini to receive power over Ethernet instead of AC

#5

Post by metadat »

> Thanks to the power efficiency of Apple Silicon, the M1 Mac mini was the perfect hardware to test out PoE, as on idle, the device only consumes 6W. When some load is applied to the internals, that power draw can go up to 40W. After some thorough research, we found out that the maximum throughput of Power over Ethernet was 15.4W and that too over varying voltages, which are details that Ivan had left out when showing off his findings on Twitter.

The last sentence has enough typos that I'm not able to follow what they're trying to say. What happens when the machine requires more than 15.4W? If the thing isn't actually usable or stable in real-world scenarios, this becomes a lot less exciting.

It'd also be more interesting if the full components list of what was added to the inside of the machine to make this possible was shared.

Edit: Thanks to @ravetcofx for revealing how more power can be delivered over PoE https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36962808

Re: Hacker mods an M1 Mac mini to receive power over Ethernet instead of AC

#6

Post by ravetcofx »

" the M1 Mac mini was the perfect hardware to test out PoE, as on idle, the device only consumes 6W. When some load is applied to the internals, that power draw can go up to 40W. After some thorough research, we found out that the maximum throughput of Power over Ethernet was 15.4W "

They'll have to bump it up to 802.3bt (Poe ++) which can support 60W.

Cool Project though, I've been wanting to mod my Mac Mini m1 to run off USB-C PD which should be possible with modification because it uses the same PD IC as the Macbooks (CD3217) which could mean I could get it to eventually run off of a battery pack

Re: Hacker mods an M1 Mac mini to receive power over Ethernet instead of AC

#9

Post by lights0123 »

metadat wrote: post #5

> Thanks to the power efficiency of Apple Silicon, the M1 Mac mini was the perfect hardware to test out PoE, as on idle, the device only consumes 6W. When some load is applied to the internals, that power draw can go up to 40W. After some thorough research, we found out that the maximum throughput of Power over Ethernet was 15.4W and that too over varying voltages, which are details that Ivan had left out when showin…

The article simply assumes that the creator only supports the original POE when they say "POE". There's a good chance they used a PoE+ or PoE++ adapter that supports more wattage.

Re: Hacker mods an M1 Mac mini to receive power over Ethernet instead of AC

#10

Post by tredre3 »

metadat wrote: post #5

> Thanks to the power efficiency of Apple Silicon, the M1 Mac mini was the perfect hardware to test out PoE, as on idle, the device only consumes 6W. When some load is applied to the internals, that power draw can go up to 40W. After some thorough research, we found out that the maximum throughput of Power over Ethernet was 15.4W and that too over varying voltages, which are details that Ivan had left out when showin…

There are more details in the twitter thread, including a table of PoE standards:

https://twitter.com/Merocle/status/1686093369322176512

> What happens when the machine requires more than 15.4W?

The voltage will sag and the machine will likely crash!

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