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. To help preserve battery, perhaps disable 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 (curl 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 http://www.davidhunt.ie/raspberry-pi-beaglebone-black-intel-edison-benchmarked/ of Raspberry Pi vs. Beaglebone Black vs. Intel Edison.

The Intel Edison spec sheet shows the idle power with Wifi as 35 mW, while we measure 88 mW. Lkely sources for “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.

The Edison draws far less power at idle, perhaps 1/20 the power of the Raspberry Pi 3+ at idle.