1.4 Power

Powering a Raspberry Pi

You have two options to power a Raspberry Pi, either via USB power supply or via PoE.

Either way the Pi can easily become unstable if the power supply or cable can not keep a proper voltage level and current.

Depending on how many SDRs you connect, the Pis power consumption does increase by a significant amount.

For normal setups you want a good quality 2A or 3A power supply with a short and thick cable.

For PoE powering you may want to build your own PoE splitter with a Buck/Boost Converter as the cheapest PoE to USB adaptors won't work reliably.

If you fail to supply sufficient power your Pi will get slow, the SDRs will stop working and worst case the whole Pi needs to be powercycled.

Powering a Mini PC

Easiest way is to use the original power supply that came with the PC. These are often 19V 3A and have plenty of power - even enough for setups with 10 SDRs

PoE is possible, but it may be expensive to get an original PoE addon for the PC (if available) or a 19V PoE splitter.