Measured power consumption of Intel Edison
The Intel Edison power draw was measured while using the Mini Breakout Board.
Yocto 3.0 has PulseAudio, BlueMan, XDG, etc. running in the background; this brings the idle current up 5 times as much as Yocto 2.1. One looking for battery power would perhaps disable these unneeded services.
Yocto 3.5
| Activity | Power (mW) | voltage | current (mA) |
|---|---|---|---|
| booting up (peak) | 820 | 5.09 | 160 |
| 100-150% 1 CPU + Wifi | 967 | 5.09 | 190 |
| 50-100% 1 CPU + Wifi (wget https) | 820 | 5.09 | 160 |
| 5% 1 CPU + heavy disk write | 561 | 5.10 | 110 |
| idle | 410 | 5.12 | 80 |
| powered off (LED only adapter board) | < 51 | 5.12 | < 0.01 |
Yocto 3.0
| Activity | Power (mW) | voltage | current (mA) |
|---|---|---|---|
| booting up (peak) | 944 | 4.97 | 190 |
| using Wifi (opkg update) | 803 | 5.02 | 160 |
| idle | 455 | 5.05 | 90 |
| powered off (LED only adapter board) | < 51 | 5.12 | < 0.01 |
Yocto 2.1
| Activity | Power (mW) | voltage | current (mA) |
|---|---|---|---|
| booting up (peak) | 984 | 8.2 | 120 |
| using Wifi (opkg update) | 680 | 8.5 | 80 |
| typing text (using serial port) | 346 | 8.65 | 40 |
| idle | 88 | 8.8 | 10 |
| powered off (LED is on adapter board) | 45 | 8.9 | 5 |
Benchmarks of Raspberry Pi vs. Beaglebone Black vs. Intel Edison.
The Intel Edison spec sheet shows the idle power with Wifi as 35 mW, while my measurement is 88 mW. I think likely sources for my “high” power reading are the two bright green LEDs on the USB adapter board, and the switching power conversion from 9 V to 1.8 V. I would expect the discrepancy to be less than observed, but my observation/measurement method may be faulty as well.
The fact remains that the Edison draws far less power at idle, perhaps 1⁄20 the power of the Raspberry Pi 3+ at idle.