Comment about over-current change in RPI 2

Help and Support
1

Self note in case i forgot in the future:

RPI2+External powered USB hub with a 3Amp power adaptor.
Hard disks attached to external usb hub are all USB3 and HDDs are all powered by the external USB hub
The RPI2 is also powered by the external USB hub

Accidentally I plugged an USB3 to the USB ports on the RPI2 and the following appeared in dmesg

[ 1360.915902] usb 1-1-port2: over-current change
[ 1361.129815] usb 1-1.3: USB disconnect, device number 11
[ 1361.289713] usb 1-1.4: USB disconnect, device number 9

This means the RPI2 was not proving juice to power the USB3 disk. Changing back the USB disk to the external USB solved the problem.

However this led me to find this very interesting page via google:

Here basically by software we can up the 600ma drawn by the usb ports on the RPI B+ I have to try an see if this also works on RPI2.
Note that the use of this procedure will fry your RPI if done incorrectly.

2

Yes, we’ve already included a toggle for this in the Pi Config section of MyOSMC addon.

Exactly where is this documented?

3

You won’t fry the Pi with this setting.

Worst case, if you enable max_usb_current and your power supply is insufficient for the USB disk you connect, then the Pi might crash when the power supply voltage sags. No permanent damage will occur.

It is recommended you only enable this setting if you have a good 2A (or higher) power supply.

1 Like
4

I think I overreacted at the “fry” part…cause in the past I blew a few Pi1 playing with voltages :wink:
So im always cautious when I read things that increase voltage via software.

But thanks for the slap!!! hehehe