Thread title says it all.
His system is very heavily used and he’s noticed this requirement. It gets so bad at times that he needs to do a hard restart (power cycle) as the Pi stops responding at all.
Memory leak? Bad SD card?
May be power starved. Check the 5v. What’s the power source? Typical wall-wart?
What’s the interface to the radio? Modified sound fob or a more robust interface board?
Since using wall warts, even PowerWerx USBBuddy, suffered voltage sag/node down, corrupt SD cards I changed to implementing adjustable buck-converters set to 5.2v. Cheap on Amazon.
He says the usual 2.5 amp wall wart that comes with most of the Pi kits. I’ll suggest one of the 12 - 5 v buck converters to him (I use them and swear by 'em)
I agree with @Jim_Aspinwall_No1PC , power issues would be most likely cause.
For best results, and power backup possibilities, use a battery that is under continuous charge.
(battery acts as a filter)
Hard to find good power supplies that are clean under ‘load’. for these things.
There are ebay sellers that have 5v 5a-20a switching supplies that work pretty good.
Just over size them so you are not near the load limit. That is where you will have issues with noise in line.
Make sure you are using a high-current USB cable. Charger cables will not work. I have found this to be a real problem!
I note a large selection of adjustable buck-converters, but some have comments about lack of a common ground causing issues. I would like to power two Raspberry Pi3b nodes at my repeater site. Could I use one buck converter to power both? Any concerns about some units requiring separate grounds for input/output? Any specific model/version which has proven to work well?
Thanks, Craig - AE7I
None of the ones I use present a common-ground issue… - input and - output all end up at the same ground eventually.
One 3A buck-unit per each Pi. Not enough current to run two.
1 Like
Thanks for the advice. 73, Craig