This site is now in read-only archive mode. Please move all discussion, and create a new account at the new Victron Community site.
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?
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
My pi zero 2W uses about 1.5W with 3 usb dongels attached + wifi.
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.
