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Pi 1st generation can't cope

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I hope this might be helpful to someone sometime if they are stuck - as I was.

I was feeding with a 1st generation Pi, blue R820T2 stick, "Add-On" wifi dongle. Nothing else connected - Vino running on the Pi so it could be controlled from elsewhere with VNC once set up.

All started well. Then after a few months I started to see my feeding statistics looking like this:

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After much investigating I've concluded it was overloading on the USB ports. The dongle draws 2 watts, the wifi dongle 0.5 watts. (I measured and averaged with recently calibrated kit.) That's 2.5 watts @ 5v which is 500mA. Exactly at the maximum for the two USB ports. The ports are protected by polyfuses. They self heal when broken - some variations take up to 30 days to fully heal apparently.

So it was connecting, getting hot, dropping the connection and so on. Turning it off, re-booting etc gave enough time for the polyfuses to "heal". Giving up and leaving it overnight gave it even longer so when turned on again it all seemed fine - for a bit. Ambient temp and direct sunlight was probably a factor too. All of which meant it managed to make me investigate absolutely everything except the Pi itself. Conclusion - my particular 1st generation Pi isn't up to it.

My solution - I bought a 10.1" Netbook from 2010 with Windows 7. Cheaper on eBay than buying a new Pi with case etc. Instant keyboard and screen. Easy to set up, runs the feed with no problems. If that is sacrilege I plead guilty.
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