immutability Posted August 15, 2016 Posted August 15, 2016 I ordered OPI PC+ as a testing device for a potential battery/solar powered project (using OPI Lite/One later on) and while testing the built-in WiFi on OPI PC+, it seems it's not possible to power it off once enabled, or perhaps I'm doing something wrong. If the wlan0 entry in /etc/network/interfaces is commented out, the idle current is roughly 210 mA, and after issuing sudo poweroff, it drops to near zero. With wlan0 enabled, the idle current is roughly 310 mA, but after powering off, it drops to about 100 mA and stays that way until disconnected from DC. Attempting to do sudo ifconfig wlan0 down does not seem to change anything (wireless goes down, but the idle current remains at 310 mA and poweroff current remains at 100 mA). I'm not sure how other devices behave (I'm new to both Orange Pi as well as Armbian) but it doesn't seem OK. Is there a way to power off the on-board RTL8189 somehow, or could this be a potential bug? Thanks for any guidance in advance! Edit: I forgot to mention I installed the Jessie server 5.14 / kernel 3.4.112 image and then did sudo apt-get update followed by sudo apt-get upgrade so dpkg now reports 5.16 for the sun8i packages. The only hardware connected to the board is the GC2035 camera for testing, but the only module currently enabled in /etc/modules is 8189fs.
tkaiser Posted August 15, 2016 Posted August 15, 2016 Attempting to do sudo ifconfig wlan0 down does not seem to change anything (wireless goes down, but the idle current remains at 310 mA and poweroff current remains at 100 mA). We've seen this from time to time on different boards that the kernel crashes on shutdown and therefore the board does not completely power off. In case the only module loaded is really just 8189fs (please check lsmod output) please report back whether a rmmod -f 8189fs helps (both lowering idle consumption and poweroff state).
immutability Posted August 15, 2016 Author Posted August 15, 2016 Thanks tkaiser! I have enabled the firewall in the meantime so there was a bunch of other modules, but I have disabled it for this test and double-checked that lsmod only lists 8189fs. This time the idle current was 330 mA, but doing rmmod -f 8189fs took it down to 230 mA and - seeing this - I expected that doing a poweroff would reduce it to zero (and it did). So can there be anything done about this, or just stick with a workaround of scripting a rmmod before the poweroff?
tkaiser Posted August 15, 2016 Posted August 15, 2016 So can there be anything done about this, or just stick with a workaround of scripting a rmmod before the poweroff? Good to hear it's working now. Maybe the best place to store this command is in our armhwinfo script -- please compare with http://forum.armbian.com/index.php/topic/1711-cubie-truck-doesnt-shut-down/ Maybe it would be worth a try to iterate through a number of modules known to cause problems and trying to force unload them in armhwinfo's stop case. Don't know. At least you know the root cause for the issue and can investigate further (me being curious about how low consumption can go )
immutability Posted August 16, 2016 Author Posted August 16, 2016 Good to hear it's working now. Maybe the best place to store this command is in our armhwinfo script -- please compare with http://forum.armbian.com/index.php/topic/1711-cubie-truck-doesnt-shut-down/ Thank you for pointing me to the thread and the commented armhwinfo example - this works nicely! Happy to have learned something new in the process. Edit: A small update - after taking some more precise readings, the actual "powered off" current on my OPI PC+ seems to be about 13 mA (the one I previously referred to as "near zero"). This value was taken using a DMM at the ground pin. My previous readings were from a simple Chinese USB "pass-through" meter.
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