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Raspberry Pi Uptime Wars

82 days of uptime on a Raspberry Pi, tracked with a cron job to SQLite database.

Since the Raspberry Pi uses very little electricity, it's easy to just leave on all the time. As my Pi was on for a while after I got it I realized it started to accumulate some pretty impressive uptime. At one point it had gone 82 days without shutting down or rebooting. Unfortunately, my house lost power due to a storm with heavy winds and my Pi started back at 0.

I'm at 47 days now and attempting to beat my record - there were a few experiments in between that caused some reboots. A friend had his Pi on for 101 days straight when he accidentally cut off its power. A good way to garner good uptime would be to get a UPS for your Pi. They're not too expensive on Amazon and would keep a Raspberry Pi going for nearly 2 hours without any outside power source. 


So what's your best uptime? Do you have a screenshot of it? Add it to the comments below. My Raspberry Pi's uptime is accessible on the web here: http://treddell.com/pi/. I'll also update this post if I beat my previous record.

Battery Backup for the Raspberry Pi



One of the coolest things about the Pi is the ability to leave it on all the time without worrying about your electricity bill. It uses very little power, but can still do so many different things 24 hours a day. The Pi is also very stable for a cheap computer when left alone. Mine is currently at 47 days of uptime (you can check my Pi's status here: http://treddell.com/pi/) and my friend's Pi was at 101 days at one point.

However, a brief flicker in your electrical source can bring your uptime crashing down to 0 days and interrupt whatever the Raspberry Pi was doing at the time. But you can check out this project to prevent this: Raspberry Pi Battery Backup.

This tutorial from Repair Hub unfortunately uses the backup as a quick way to gracefully shut down the Pi. I'm interested in a cheap solution to keep the Pi running until the power comes back on or the battery is depleted. This UPS System (uninterruptable power supply) looks like it would do the trick. It would run for about ~40 min at 10 W of output. A Model B Raspberry Pi is rated at using 3.5 W while idle. This means we could get 114 minutes on battery backup. Not too bad.

Raspberry Pi News, Week of May 1 2014



Hey there! I'm deciding what experiment to start next with my Raspberry Pi, but until then here are some cool things in the news that other people are doing with their Pi's: