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I know Rasp. Pi is all the rage these days, but if I were to make a solar-server, it'd be off of Beaglebone Black instead. * Beaglebone Black uses slightly les
by dragontamer 3y ago
I know Rasp. Pi is all the rage these days, but if I were to make a solar-server, it'd be off of Beaglebone Black instead.
* Beaglebone Black uses slightly less power and is slower than Rasp. Pi. Lower power is a big benefit however.
* Beaglebone has the "Programmable Realtime Unit" (a microcontroller-like hard-realtime subsystem with GPIO pins).
* These PRU subsystems can probably (???) be utilized for the battery-state-of-charge and possibly even provide a software-control for mppt solar chargers. Theoretically of course, but... I have to imagine that a Cortex M4 has enough MHz to handle these kinds of calculations.
* If not, the Beaglebone Black has a built in ADC that could be used as the basis of power calculations. Worst case, add in a proper uC to handle power / build my own MPTT / Battery charger.
- tiagod 3y agoAt least on MCUs, being slower can counter-act the lower active power, as you'll take longer to do whatever you want to do and go back to deep sleep. I'd like to know if this also happens with these SBCs, or if they even have any aggressive power saving features that can be employed.
- dragontamer 3y agoI'm not sure about the specific power modes of Rasp Pi except I hear they're barebones and kinda bad. But in any case, servers cannot sleep. Only clients can. Maybe the software architecture of this SolarPi should be rethought. Or maybe perpetual power needs to be more carefully figured out here so that the Pi can truly function as a server.