I'm curious as to the Voltage requirements of the UDOO. I noticed that the UDOO comes with a 5-15V power adapter, but was unsure what would be needed for regular use. I'll be using the WIFI, a Linux install and the Arduino half, but no screens or external hard drives, etc. I'm working on a project that will ultimately be battery powered so I was mostly curious as to what type of battery pack I should spec out. I didn't see the information anywhere but thought maybe I missed it. Thanks.
It doesn't matter to much what type of battery you have, the most common batteries supply a pretty stable voltage until the battery is empty for the most part, at which point the voltage will drop (to be more exact, the voltage will go down the entire time, but it will remain within certain limits until the capacity is to low, at what point this happens is depends on the material of the battery and the quality) I will use a battery myself for the UDOO, a 12v 5ah lead (maintenance free). Only be careful with lead batteries, because the fumes could be hazardous for you're health if used in a closed/ badly ventilated room! There are other options for batteries that do the job much better and don't have these hazardous fumes (like lead-gel batteries, or li-poly or li-ion) but they are more expensive.
I just realized I wasn't clear. I was curious what the voltage requirements were. For instance, would a 7V battery pack be enough to power up the UDOO or does it need a 12V supply regardless of what it is doing?
Interestingly they just posted this as Kickstarter update. "Hallo Kickstarters! Here we are with a long-awaited update about power consumption of UDOO. The test has been made with the following setup: 12V, 2A power supply HDMI monitor plugged in serial cable plugged in WiFi on nothing on USB The power consumption of UDOO stands at ~3 Watts at idle once booted (3.306W for the Dual and 3.654W for the Quad), while is slightly less with the ethernet chip disabled." Very nice.
usually the ardiuno stuff won't boot properly on < 7V... SO that's probably why they went with a 12V setup. I've run Arduino nanos and Unos off 9V before, but usually power Megas off 12V (6 AAA) depending on what I'm doing. Going much lower than 7V tends to cause the Arduinos to be unstable, easily browning out during high load.
The DC/DC-Converters used on Arduino boards have a high dropout, that's why you have to supply at least about 7V to get them to supply 5V. You can drive Arduinos with a 5V supply when you bypass the converter. I'm pretty sure that the same thing happens here, but I don't know if there's a way to safely bypass the converter on the UDOO. Anyways, those DC/DC-converters have a pretty wide range of voltages that are supported.
Thanks mkopack and anlumo, that's what I needed to know. I've done work with Arduinos and Netduinos, but not enough to know there was a minimum 'safe' voltage other than just what was required for operation.
Yeah, and keep in mind if you're going to do anything related to driving motors, you're probably going to want to split the motor power out on it's own. Otherwise you'll certainly get brown outs during motor spin up/down/braking. I had to learn that lesson the hard way - couldn't figure out why my mini sumo bot kept rebooting every time it got to the edge and tried to stop... Sure enough, splitting the power for the motors out to it's own batteries solved it.
my udoo board arrived in a padded envelope and no power supply. You don't seem to sell them, just include them free with pre-ordered boards (as mine was). Is this one suitable (there are a wide variety of barrel diameters and which side is pos and which gnd has not always been standard)? http://www.pololu.com/catalog/product/1468
>my udoo board arrived in a padded envelope and no power supply. Mine came in in a box in an envelope but with no power supply also. I love the product but feel some what shafted. I got the quad version and you can order the quad version from the udoo.org store for the same price and they give you a power supply. We did get a cute UDOO branded Bluetooth USB adapter, ooo. OH well. It'll be fun to play with.
You can find many power supplies on Amazon for under $15. The one i got was just under $10 (USD) As for the Bluetooth adapter, if you check those on amazon you will see the cost is about the same, literally. Kickstarter backers got a $10 BT 4.0 USB Adapter, and current pre-order customers are getting a free $10 power supply, so no reason at all to feel shafted in my view. Im sure once pre-orders are over neither will be included.
Yeah. If you look around, you probably have a 12v 2A supply laying around.. Like from an external hard drive. As for connectors... RadioShack (herein the US) carries these things and cables, and power supplies.
I can tell you that the UDOO will not boot on 250mA @ 12volts. It browns out by the looks of it (Green power LED flickers). However it runs fine on my 1.5A adapter. I've currently got the WiFi and Ethernet in use on my Quad and it's running well (Posting this from the Quad). I'm happy about the low power consumption ( Around 300mA on idle ). I've yet to test it under strong load but it seems very good at the moment. Another note: It wont run on AC, yeah sure that's obvious.. but it wasn't obvious on the first Adapter I tried. Lesson from this is that the UDOO survived unharmed by the 50Hz 24VA adapter. (Really shouldn't have assumed it was DC)
@nicholasstg according to this page in the Features section it says "Voltage 12V ± 5%." I'm curious where you saw a "5-15V power adapter" for the Udoo? In the project I am working on we already have 24V, 15V, and 5V @ 2.0 Amps available but not 12 volts. So it would be nice if we actually could use 15V or 5V.
This is a very old topic about the Udoo Dual/Quad board. This board has a wider voltage input range than the Udoo x86 you are referring to.
