MiSTer FPGA Forum

Hi,

I have a few questions regarding mister power requirements, any help would be really appreciated.

This is my setup:

- usb hub board 2.1
- I/O board 6.1 XL with ADC Audio Input

USB hub has connected a wifi dongle, 2 wireless controller receivers, mouse/keyboard. That's not a trivial power consumption, so I need to provide a separate power supply to the usb hub, using a splitter on the cable coming from the 3A power supply unit.

With this setup, everything works just fine.

Now I recently added a MT-32 pi, based on a raspberry pi 3B+. Power provided by the user port on the I/O board seems not be enough, since the pi gets stuck in a boot loop. Everything works fine if I provide a separate power supply to the Pi.

My question is this: do I need a 4A (or more?) power supply to use the MT-32 pi without providing separate power? If so, would I still need the splitter to power the usb hub, or it will be enough to just provide power to the terasic de10-nano?

Thanks in advance for any kind of advice!

According to https://raspberrypi.stackexchange.com/q ... e-in-a-day

- your pi might be using 1 - 4 watts depending on CPU usage.

My MiSTer w/digital & USB hub & a few USB items uses 6-7 watts (would be more with more USB devices plugged in)

Your 15 watt (3 amp) supply should be able to handle it. I don't know how much power the MiSTer's USB port can deliver - that could be the limiting factor here. If that's the case, using a larger 20/25/30 watt DC supply may not help any.

Something to try: get a 3 way DC splitter (1 DC -> 3 DC), and a DC to microUSB adapter similar to https://www.adafruit.com/product/2727
https://www.adafruit.com/product/2789

1 DC goes to the MiSTer
1 DC goes to the USB hub (always power the hub for sure)
1 DC -> DC to microUSB adapter -> MT32 Pi

Thanks, I Will try that

I power my MiSTer, usb hub wifi, Keyboard/mouse dongle, bluetooth and 2.5 ghz controller dongle + mt33pi/oled screen with a pi3a all from a single cable when playing on X68000 with midi and a keyboard , controller etc my PSU shows the MiSTer is pulling 2.1 amps so your 3A PSU sounds beefy enough.
if you decide to add in a 2.5 HDD then maybe look at a 4A one!

If you're using an inline switch try without.

Stinky wrote: ↑Wed Feb 16, 2022 11:28 pm If you're using an inline switch try without.

I am, and I tried removing it, but nothing changed.
Situation seems a little odd to me, tbh. Either my power supply brags 3A but cannot really provide that much, or there's an issue with some cable/splitter. Can't think of anything else.

I will try a 3 way splitter anyway.

Thank you all for your replies

For anybody experiencing similar issues, here's how I solved.

First I tried a 3 way splitter as suggested above but no luck.
So a did some digging. Found out that the Raspberry Pi 3b+ consumes 400mA of current, while model 3b consumes only 260mA. So I switched to a Pi 3b I had lying around and now It works like a charm without providing external power.
Hope this helps.


Thanks again for you advices!

If you're that close to overloading your 3A supply, you might want to upgrade it to a 4A.