CM5 Power Consumption / Runtimes

uConsole
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I guess the question that was on my mind, it might be on other people’s as well.
If didn’t get your uConsole yet: What can I expect the battery life to be?
If you got your uConsole: Am I having the same experience as everybody else?
I was in the same boat, so I made a battery monitor script, and have been running it for a few days, in different use cases.
It monitors the battery state of charge every 2min, and logs it to a file. With date stamp, state (charging / discharging), voltage, mah, % of charge, etc…
The uconsole usually dies, with the final logged %, at 2%. Also, it takes a long while to go from 99% to 100%, so I just measure from 2% until the first time it hits 99%.
Below are the first batch of results. (more coming).

Relevant Software / Hardware:
OS: Rex’s Bookworm image
Batteries: NEW Samsung 35E (18650 - 3500mAh)
Core: CM5 8GB, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, SD Card (no Under / overClocking)
USB: RTL-SDR
Charger: 140W MacbookPRO Type-C power adapter

SDR++ (full brightness)
97%-4% - 106min (1h 46min)
3% - 99% - 440min (7h 20min)

Youtube (1/2 brightness)
99% - 4% - 220min (3h 40min)
2% - 99% - 258min (4h 18min)

Idle (1/2 brightness)
99%-2% - 310min (5h 10min)
2% -99% - 198min (3h 18min)

I am curious if anybody else is close to my numbers.

3 Likes
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…No handicap? Like, did you underclock or overclock? Sounds par for the performance (relative to my 8GB CM4 setup). Crackles on mid-to-low power don’t sound reassuring, though.

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No under / over clocking.
The crackles do happen, but not always. And when they do, i’s not that bad.

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I can only suppose, if I underclock that to CM4’s speed, I’ll get way better battery life?

(P.S.: I’m getting long uptimes with my NCR18650GA’s with no DE/WM running. That’s with some YouTube audio over mpv with screen timeout, and only command line/terminal.)

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I’m not sure under clocking would significantly increase battery life… Because the procesor is not running at 100%. And the reason I went for the cm5 vs cm4, was because of the cpu performance (when needed). People report a “sluggish” experience with the cm4.