Intel Edison generic calculator shield photo journal

[MarkHaysHarris777]

Greetings, well, I moved pdeclib into the edison and ran some voltage|current tests, as well some performance tests. The following hi-res pic is a screen shot of python calculating PI to 1000+ digits using an AGM routine. The import of pilib imports pdeclib as well, which uses Pythons new Decimal module; very fast, arbitrary precision. The highlighted area is the signature for the 1000th place ...201989 python on edison called this out in a matter of a few hundred milliseconds:



Also, the datasheet says that the edison will normally not exceed 200 mA, with occasional current spikes as high as 600 mA during wifi transmit. I have never seen the current jump above 120 mA. I started three wifi sessions to the edison from a VT102 terminal and started a python PI job on two of them... set the dscale(20,000) to ensure that both of them ran for a while... then I took a look at /proc/cpuinfo and the output from 'top'. Both cores were clicking at 500 Mhz with the system showing 99% CPU... all three terminal ssh sessions remained active and responsive and the current never jumped above 120 mA ! The edison board barely gets warm... so, based on an alkaline 9v battery being about 586 mAh (my four pack is then 2344 mAh) means that clicking away at PI for several hours my 9v four-pack will keep this thing powered for 19.5 hours. A lithium 9v four-pack will power the edison for 40 hours under full load; for 96 hours under normal mostly idle load. I have not seen the lithium ion shield pack yet, so I am not sure its precise mAh specs; keep you posted. The bottom line is that battery operation (while not coin cells) is viable for this board-- this is NOT the Raspberry PI load monster!

Cheers,
marcus