operate two rockpi from one power source?

[tony013]

Hi,

 

I built a second nas from rockpi4 and as I used the 12V plug to power the tower, I thought, I could use an old pc power supply to drive both.

But when I start both nas from the same power supply, both will crash.

 

Any idea, how I could avoid that crash and stil use only one power supply?

Maybe add some electronic components?

[Werner]

If they work independently fine but crash if they are connected both then it seems the PSU is too weak and drops voltage and therefore unexpected behavior like crashes can happen. If you are in electronics and like to tinker rather than directly grabbing a new PSU you could try to add an additional capacitor to compensate for load spikes that cause voltage drops.

 

On the other hand oddly enough since basically ANY ATX PSU should be able to handle dozens of SBCs since they usually draw close to no power at all thanks to ARM architecture...

[tony013]

vor 2 Stunden schrieb Werner:

If they work independently fine but crash if they are connected both then it seems the PSU is too weak and drops voltage

Hm, the default power supply of the sata tower package has 60W and the old PC power supply has 500W

According to rockpi-wiki a ssd needs about 5W - so about 25W should already be enuf ...

 

I suspect that the problem is more likely to be voltage spikes that could be transmitted from one part to the other via the power supply line.
That's why I would have thought of diodes rather than capacitors.
What do you think?

 

[Werner]

Not sure if that is actually possible but if you are into tinkering with that stuff sure, why not? Give it a shot. If you have an oscilloscope might be worth doing measurements to get an idea what is actually going on. If there are indeed voltage spikes maybe pickup some Zener diodes to get rid of those.