BeagleBone Black Current Draw

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liveitnerd
 
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Joined: Tue Apr 16, 2013 3:09 am

BeagleBone Black Current Draw

Post by liveitnerd »

Hi,
I'm really interested in the BeagleBone Black for a project that I want to run off PoE but I'd like to know what the power usage of the BeagleBone Black is when running Linux. I realise that other things may come in to play but at this stage I'd be looking at running a console version of Linux to reduce the overheads of running a GUI. HDMI would only be used for Debugging purposes when the unit would more than likely be connected to a larger power source and with the storage now provided on-board the SD Card slot would be unpopulated.


Thanks,
LiveItNerd

Farsyte
 
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Joined: Fri Apr 26, 2013 1:54 pm

Re: BeagleBone Black Current Draw

Post by Farsyte »

The data sheet says 210ma to 460ma.

I'm observing a cluster of four of them; configuration includes MicroSD and Ethernet, but no USB connections, and no HDMI connection. I'm running a recent minimal Ubuntu ARM distribution, and it looks like I've successfully avoided having an X server running (but pleanty of xterm and emacs and xload processes flinging windows out onto my main machine).

This 4-cluster draws about 1 Amp steady state; during boot, I saw it head up toward 2 Amps. So the limits in the data sheet are regularly reached, in both directions.

The stock charger for the unit is rated at 2 Amps; I'm using a 10 Amp power supply. I'm probably safe.

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dtownmaker
 
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Re: BeagleBone Black Current Draw

Post by dtownmaker »

Adafruit has a very affordable ($5.95 US) passive POE that will allow you to inject power from the original DC power source.

http://www.adafruit.com/products/435

I am probably going to utilize this instead of mocking up a 48v -> 5v circuit

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