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How low power can the StereoPi v2 be?

Posted: Thu Jun 02, 2022 6:17 pm
by sodyiumcl
Hello,

I'm interested in exploring remote field deployments of the StereoPi v2 that are extremely power-limited.

Is there a way to keep the StereoPi v2 in a "sleep" or "rest" state until it is triggered to take a picture by some external sensor? If I turn EVERYTHING off except the ability to be triggered to take a still stereo image (no videos), roughly what levels of power consumption rate can I expect of the StereoPi v2? Any tips on minimising power load?

Thanks!

Re: How low power can the StereoPi v2 be?

Posted: Mon Jun 20, 2022 9:36 am
by Realizator
Brief answer is 'nope'.
You can force StereoPi to go to sleep mode (like any Raspberry Pi), but:
1. This mode is not reliable and require a lot of advanced software skills with understanding of hardware-specific things. We got no luck with this.
2. Even if you put compute module to this mode, we have camera sensors. They can't be easilly put to sleep mode, and to be fully initialized during boot process. Even if you are not taking a photo or video now, sensors are powered and working.

I see two ways here:
1. If you are not targeting the "immediate photo capture", you can use the solution where Pi is powered off, and boots each time to take photo. Yes, in this case you need some extra hardware to power it up using external trigger, and keep in mind that during the boot process power consumption is relatively high.

2. If you need immediate photo capture by the trigger - it is better to keep device running, but minimize the power consumption. For example, you can disable the onboard USB HUB chip, disable wifi/bt, downclock CPU/GPU, disable all background features (video stream to the admin panel, video preview , etc.).