Intel Edison generic calculator shield photo journal

[MarkHaysHarris777]

Greetings, well, my edison mini-breakout has been updated with the latest Yocto gnu/linux image 1.6.1 (this is an absolute requirement, words to the wise) and it has spent much of this day sitting peacefully on a shelf stand-alone battery operated (9v power source on J21 +round -square) running sshd, web server, and some other stuff; how much fun is this?! I made a parallel power source (four 9v batts each via 1N4002 diode) to a Berg connector on J21. The outside power pins are (-) 'square' solder dots, and the inside pins are (+) 'round' solder dots. I have a lithium ion pack ordered. My power draw measurements follow the hi-res pic. This is the tiniest gnu/linux server I've ever supported:



The unit measures (bounces) between 100-120 mA at 8.3v during boot-up; after which it settles in at about 50 mA idle with wifi 'ON'-- 10 mA with wifi 'off'. When the unit is processing keyboard entries (like starting python, or top) the current spikes to 100 mA and then settles in at about 50 mA again... about 415 mW. I do not know yet how to turn off the two bright LEDs on the mini-breakout board (one is board power, and the other is system on, or active). The LEDs are pulling about 10 mA, which jives with my hearsay evidence that says wifi draws 40 mA.

Well, we knew it was going to be higher than 'coin cell' range ( its a dual core 500 Mhz Atom processor for crying out loud) but its somewhat lower than I was expecting ( my Raspberry PI b draws somewhat more than half an amp just sitting there idle!).

I'm excited to try the lithium ion pack /

I will be putting together a getting started guide for this mini-breakout board to help folks get up and running a fast as possible. There is some misinformation out there, and the doc from Intel is kinda sparse. One thing everyone must know is that the edison ships with downlevel Yocto gnu/linux which is very buggy (really irritating, I spare you the details now). All of those problems vanish after the system upgrade.

Cheers,
marcus