Hi everyone, I'm using an A20 OLinuXino board for a low-power project. I'd like to know the typical power consumption of the board when it's in sleep or idle mode with no peripherals connected. Are there any recommended settings or tweaks to minimize power usage in this state? Thanks in advance!
Geometry Dash (https://geometrydashwave.io)
These are power-hungry processors not designed with low power modes in mind, not a lot of current can be saved especially if you want to use the boards at their full capability. Yet, you can limit the CPU clock, the RAM clock and much more to reduce the power consumption to a minimum. Hard to say what is the minimum since it depends on the goals and what you are willing to sacrifice.
On the A20 OLinuXino, idle power consumption with no peripherals connected is usually in the few hundred milliwatts range, depending on the OS and kernel configuration. True deep sleep support on the A20 is pretty limited, so most setups rely on aggressive idle tuning rather than full suspend. You can reduce power usage by lowering the CPU frequency and voltage (using cpufreq with the powersave governor), disabling unused interfaces in the device tree, turning off HDMI, Ethernet, and USB when not needed, and unloading unnecessary kernel modules. With some tuning, you can get idle consumption down noticeably, but it won't be ultra-low like an MCU-based system.