Hello all,
Currently making the switch from Alexa to Picroft and I’m wondering what the power requirements of the Picroft are and if there are ways to minimize its power consumption (such as putting it to sleep at night). Any insights or tips on this?
Well, it is basically a Raspberry Pi3 that is running 24/7.
A quick research shows that a RPI3 consumes about 1.4W when idling and no additional devices are attached via USB or GPIO.
here a better description of power usage and comparison…
I was “concerned” about power consumption as well — as i try to build a self efficient automated house. currently where vampire power accounts for +30% of my energy usage … trying to get that to a minimum has being a challenge … especially when you look at just the simple stuff a router consumes up to 20w, pc 120w, ai 6w data server and automation 120w… I combined all those into one 2.4ghz ( 4 core) 8 gig memory micro router board – that operates at about 20W
in case someone else is curious-- I put a wattage meter on my all in one device today - as I was also now more curious .
j1900 64bit 1m cache, 2 ghz up to 2.4 ghz TMP:10w . multiple lan port router board
full load-- at booting --20 - 23watts
idle with no load 10-11W
idle with my base operation , domoticz, influxdb,grafana, zigbee2mqtt and acting as basic router ( tracking usage) 11-12 watts. ( imputing about 1000 data entry points a minute into influxdb via mqtt and collectd )
idle with mycroft running in background - 13-14 watts - 15-21 watts when speaking ( mycroft-gui active) .
kodi playing 720p - 20watts ( mycroft in background and other base operations) - minus 3 watt if you mute the mic on mycroft
youtube video - 17watts - minus 3 watts if you mute the mic on mycroft
Considering the money some of us have invested in 800W+ PSUs for our larger machines, I am more than extremely satisfied with those numbers. Thanks for running them!
You can turn off the USB/Ethernet chip to save additional power and reduce heat.
If you are concerned about the running daemons and the additional power used due to the “listening”, you could use cron to shut down the daemons in the evening, and cron to turn Mycroft back on in the morning. Then it would just be idle CPU power used which would be about as minimal as you can get and still have the OS be fully functional.
Thats what I am doing with mine, however I am running it on Ubuntu on my workstation so I can play with it. Not sure how much further you would want to take it after that point.