Power supply for AutoPi

jorgeli · March 24, 2018, 4:10pm

So what consumption do the 4g/lte edition have on the 12 v battery?

Peter · April 18, 2018, 12:11pm

The 4G/LTE modem should not affect the battery life of your vehicle. As @Malte wrote, the device will power it self down when the ignition is off. When the ignition is on, the vehicle produces more than enough power to supply the AutoPi dongle. Therefor the battery will never drain.

Best
Peter

jorgeli · April 18, 2018, 2:35pm

Hi Peter
Malte.says that it is always powered even when ignition is off.
And the device will power down when low battery.
And that I must have . Iwant to see charge status on a electric car. That’s because I ask first time .
Or I must cancel my order if not.

Peter · April 18, 2018, 2:52pm

Yes, as @Malte says (he is always right), it will power itself down and go to sleep mode when the ignition is off. So there is still power on the device, it will just consume so little it wont affect your battery life. During low battery the device will go to hibernate mode, to secure the battery of your vehicle. I think we are talking about the same thing, I just wanted to make sure you received an answer to this.

jorgeli · April 18, 2018, 3:12pm

Ok thanks for answer that’s good
Hope it will work fine on Hyundai Ionic electric.
Regard Jörgen

Malte · May 18, 2018, 12:49pm

A post was split to a new topic: How reliable is the automatic power management?

Kemper · June 3, 2018, 2:44pm

Hi Peter, how does AutoPi manages its power state? If it reads voltage level only, it could be a problem for me. I have a camper van with two batteries: starting and aux. The aux is charged with solar panels, but when it is full, starting is being charged. Just from voltage measuring AutoPi could assume car is on and engine is running.

Peter · June 4, 2018, 11:21am

Hi @Kemper

The AutoPi actually wakes up on voltage change. The default setup is this:

vchg_wake: ' +0.20V IN 1000 ms'

This can be configured to match your setup.

I think you can make it work with your camper also.

br
Peter

Kemper · August 17, 2018, 9:05am

Hi, it might look weird, but it would be great to wake AutoPi with short massive voltage drop and increase in my situation. It means car engine is starting. Higher voltage means charging not only by alternator.

Peter · August 17, 2018, 3:40pm

Hi Kemper,

I can see where you are going. This is definately something we will make configureable in the future. For the time being, it doesn’t matter if the AutoPi starts when charging, it will power itself down when it detects that the engine is not running.

best,
Peter

Ion · August 31, 2018, 12:37pm

When AutoPi is in sleep mode the USB ports are powered?

Malte · August 31, 2018, 1:53pm

Hi Ion

No, the USB ports is not powered while in sleep mode.

Best regards
/Malte

Ion · August 31, 2018, 5:54pm

@Malte, thank you.
I also tested earlier and saw that USB is not powered during sleep, which suits my needs very well, as I want to power a dashboard camera only when the car is started, and without using the cigarette lighter plug.
Do you have an estimation for the power consumption during sleep for the version with LTE? Is the RPi Zero shut down completely during sleep?
Until now I saw the following components being powered during sleep:

LTE modem (because I can wake up the device with an SMS and it also seems to start when it receives some kind of ping or network request)
OBD chipset
accelerometer
and I guess some very low power microcontroller.

Peter · September 2, 2018, 5:41pm

Hi @Ion

The AutoPi has two modes of sleep. First one is called “sleep” and second one is called “deep sleep/hibernation”.

During normal sleep the parts you listed are “online”. During sleep the AutoPi uses about 100mA and is able to wake on SMS or ignition on. We are actually planning a feature where it can wake on movement, like if you car is being towed or someone hits your car while parked. This is why the accelerometer is awake.

During hibernation only the OBD chip and the microcontroller is awake. In this mode the device consumes about 1-3mA. This mode is only used if low battery is detected on the vehicle and is used to ensure that your battery will never be drained.

The RPi Zero is always powered down in both sleep modes.

best
Peter

Ion · September 3, 2018, 12:17pm

That sounds cool!
Thank you very much @Peter

dcriken · October 16, 2018, 3:37am

This thread is awesome and many of my questions have been answered around shutdown.

jorgeli · November 23, 2018, 4:07pm

After update the battery voltage level from Auto pi is crazy.
It could be 80% and after 1 minute in the logg 50% and shutting down??
Something must be wrong

Peter · December 4, 2018, 3:23pm

Hi @jorgeli

We just released a new update today, with some minor updates to this.

Can you update your device and then keep monitoring the issue. If it persists please dont hessitate to reach out again.

best
Peter

jorgeli · December 6, 2018, 3:56pm

Hi Peter
Now it works fine again Thank you.
Some solution for Hyundai Ioniq electric soon?
I have tried can bys record but have not get any inormation from my car yet .
Regard Jörgen

Peter · December 7, 2018, 2:49pm

Hi @jorgeli

Good to hear.

We have some very exciting updates for the next release. Some of them will be relevant for the EV community. We hope to have this released right before Christmas.

We are actively working in improving the experience for all of our EV/PHEV customers and this is on our shortlist of task to do first.

best
Peter