Shutting Down Mine vs. Sleep - Page 2

BenjaminS · 05-11-2005, 11:48 AM

key in, mini on; key out, mini sleep, any questions? haha

sdashiki · 05-11-2005, 11:49 AM

YEah i get it. But isnt the mac auto sleep after X minutes of inactivity good enough?

BenjaminS · 05-11-2005, 11:57 AM

point taken and im sure it would work, but come on isn't this so much fun though

sdashiki · 05-12-2005, 11:18 AM

I guess something hardwired to tell it to sleep is better than having to press a button to get it to sleep. Otherwise when you turn the key off, the music you were listening to is still playing on the computer but your amps are turned off...

mcr2582 · 05-15-2005, 12:35 AM

Back in the early iMac days, Steve Jobs commented on how little power they drew while asleep. I did a quick search and found this, which leads me to believe that there should be no problem powering the mini while asleep. I believe all Macs operate on 12 and 5 volts.. so I would think a powerbook adapter could be modified to operate a Mini directly from 12 volt DC.

Quote:

I plugged the power brick of my Mac Mini into a simple integrating power meter. Here is what I measured:

Off 0-2 Watts
Booting 30-40 Watts
Idle 25 Watts
Sleep 3-5 Watts, almost always 3 Watts

The power brick is rated at 85 Watts output. I have yet to measure power consumption during a compute-intensive task such as DVD playback.

I think the 40 Watt max was during hard disk and DVD spin-up at boot time. Idle means that the disk is spinning, booted, logged in, at the Finder with no user input.

I have a rather complex array of stuff plugged into the Mini via USB; there are two switches and at least one USB cable with in-line LED indicators, a wireless receiver for keyboard and mouse (Gyration, recommended, works fine with Mac or PC).

Of course this power reading does not include the monitor or the external FireWire disk.

I note that this power consumption level compares favorably with my 15-inch aluminum PowerBook, which has approximately the same specifications as the Mac Mini (but cost 3 times as much). The 15 PowerBook draws about 25 Watts nominally, about twice that under heavy compute load or charging the battery while running (as opposed to charging the battery during sleep).
(http://www.macintouch.com/macmini05.html)

BenjaminS · 05-15-2005, 10:03 AM

Quote: Originally Posted by sdashiki

I guess something hardwired to tell it to sleep is better than having to press a button to get it to sleep. Otherwise when you turn the key off, the music you were listening to is still playing on the computer but your amps are turned off...

Very good point.... I wonder what does happen to my audio threads when the computer is put to sleep....yay more research for me.

MikeH · 05-15-2005, 01:27 PM

Ben,

Quote:

I wonder what does happen to my audio threads when the computer is put to sleep....yay more research for me.

Mine resumes from sleep very reliably. It continues to play from the same point it was playing before sleep.

I can also tell you that if you set "Put the computer to sleep when it is inactive for: X minutes" and have CCar running (not necessarily playing a song, but just running) the display will sleep but the Mac does not go into sleep....unless I've missed a setting somewhere. FYI.

mcr2582 · 05-16-2005, 07:58 AM

Ok, here is what I'm thinking... based on what I posted earlier, the iMac draws very similar current to the powerbooks. The powerbooks run off an external "brick" same as the Mini Mac. So I'm thinking that I should be able to go buy one of the car chargers intended for a Powerbook and adapt it to power the Mini pretty much by changing the plug. This aleviates the need for an inverter. It also means that while in sleep, the Mini should draw only the 4 watts or so of power which I would think is low enough to last a long time. I'm willing to add an extra car battery to the system, but I'm not sure it will be necessary yet.

I haven't looked into detail on the 1900 so I'm guessing it is either a transformer or a voltage regulator (more or less the same thing I realize) as you're using it to maintain voltage during engine crank. But if it's being used as the power supply, there may be a simpler solution if the powerbook brick is used in the equation. I also wonder if that brick, since it is designed for use in an automotive environment might have some regulation of its own. Enough to maintain the computer at sufficient voltage and 4watts current during crank.

Ideally we could find a way to hack in a powerbook type battery system. I imagine the mini is based on iBook architecture, so it might be possible. One thing of interest there is the desire to have two different power management profiles. One for engine-on, one for engine-off. When the engine is off, I would want it to sleep in 5min or less, but I would want to be able to wake it wirelessly for network access to deposit music on it from inside the house. The other would be for engine-on where I wouldn't want it to sleep at all, though the display might sleep the backlight.

I don't have a Mac Mini yet, heck I don't have my Mini yet, but the Mini should be here in a week and a half or so. I was going to do the Mini MP3 adapter and buy an iPod, but frankly it doesn't get me the featureset I want. So I'm thinking I'll switch to AUX in and a mini, which if I were to buy a good sized iPod now (my current one is series B, no dock connector, and will sell with my BMW as it has a custom built mount and very nice sound system built around it. I'm going with Harmon Kardon at least for now in the Mini and focusing on other systems... I may eventually upgrade the sound system, but not to the degree I did before!), I could spend $300-400 on the good iPod and $250 on the BMW iPod controller which doesn't do what I want, or the ICE controller which sort of does what I want but also messes with the iPod's interface, or the iCruze which does an ok job via an external display but also costs $500 or so. Since small touchscreens have come down a lot since I last looked ($1,000->$250ish) and the Mini mac is on par with an iPod in price... I'm thinking it would be much more fun to go this route.

Any thoughts?

Michael

Bugbyte · 05-16-2005, 12:28 PM

The Mac Mini takes 18 volts input. Check out the discussion on the Carnetix forums or look at some of the early threads here about powering the Mini.

Seems like by the time you've bought a laptop iBook adaptor and hacked it up and tried to add a battery system from an iBook, maybe it would just be easier to either buy a used iBook or spend an extra $30 on the P1900? You'd get engineered regulation, auto startup/shutdown, and filtered 5 volt output for your USB.

Not trying to discourage you. By all means, if it's the journey you're interested in, that's cool. Otherwise, it seems quite a long way to go when a ready made solution is pretty close in price. The extra $$'s are pretty cheap labor for a polished product.

maxipad96 · 05-16-2005, 11:21 PM

I had a strange thing happen w/ my P1900. Been running it for a few days in "sleep" operation. I went out to my car today after being at work all day and heard..... bummmmmm... computer starting up from scratch. Frome what I initially thought, this thing could run for days w/ a healthy battery in sleep mode. I hope it was just a fluke. Sleep was working fine for 2 days. I dunno wether my power supply sensed a low battery and forced a shutdown. Thats the only thing I can think of. Thing is, my car is practically brand new and I doubt my battery is bad.

shizzle · 05-16-2005, 11:48 PM

Quote: Originally Posted by maxipad96

I had a strange thing happen w/ my P1900. Been running it for a few days in "sleep" operation. I went out to my car today after being at work all day and heard..... bummmmmm... computer starting up from scratch. Frome what I initially thought, this thing could run for days w/ a healthy battery in sleep mode. I hope it was just a fluke. Sleep was working fine for 2 days. I dunno wether my power supply sensed a low battery and forced a shutdown. Thats the only thing I can think of. Thing is, my car is practically brand new and I doubt my battery is bad.

That is strange, you should try to determine if it is running your battery down or not before you sleep it much more. Let us know.

MikeH · 05-17-2005, 07:26 AM

Maxi,

Are you saying your battery was OK (ie it started your car), but the Mac started from a cold boot?

One thing to watch out for is your Mac restarting itself from sleep mode. Matt Turner had a similar problem due to his Xenarc screen issuing USB commands during sleep (I don't understand the details of this) so he had to run his USB touchscreen input to the Mac thru a P1900-pwered USB hub so that it would fully shut down all USB activity when the P1900 went into sleep mode. IF your Mac woke itself up (while you weren't watching) the P1900 would go into forced shutdown since the Mac would be drawing more that the allowed current during sleep. This would cause the Mac to restart from a cold boot.

How are your USB devices connected?

maxipad96 · 05-17-2005, 08:31 AM

Quote: Originally Posted by MikeH

Maxi,

Are you saying your battery was OK (ie it started your car), but the Mac started from a cold boot?

That's what I'm saying.

As for the screen triggering the mac out of sleep mode, my screen shuts off when I shut the computer off. The USB device is directly plugged in to the mini. I was noticing this morning that my parking deck shakes when other cars drive by. I'm wondering if somehow this shaking triggered the mini out of sleep mode? or triggered the touchscreen? I will see if it happens again after work today. Weird cause last night it ran in sleep mode from 11pm -8am. Thats 9 hours. At work yesterday, it ran from 9am-6pm. Thats also 9 hours. My battery seems to be fine/perfect. I have a voltometer in my dash and it reads apx 15-16volts when running and 12-13 volts (This is estimated from the needle on the dial) when key is turned, but battery hasn't been started.

MikeH · 05-17-2005, 08:38 AM

Do you have a USB mouse connected?

One thing we recommend is to connect all of your USB devices to a P1900-powered USB hub. This will make sure power is removed from any USB device during sleep.

maxipad96 · 05-17-2005, 09:26 AM

No USB mouse. I have my screen running off the power supply so no way i can run a p1900 powered USB hub.