The Mk2 is totally kickass ;)

I've been freezing the final versions of code in the various PICs and programmable logic devices around the main board: as well as the mk2's real time clock, the power control PIC can wake the system up automatically at preset times so you can set power-on alarms even when the unit is in the car with the ignition off (and it takes only 1mA when in this mode).

What happens is the power control PIC can wake up the main system at intervals - programmable from every 15s to 1 hour. At this wakeup time, the main system reads the RTC (or for example, might initialise ethernet and see if there's an incoming radio network connection) and then either goes back to sleep (possibly after programming a new wait time) or does a full system wakeup (ie, boots linux).

This way, we get almost full sleep functionality without having to run the whole system all the time (the whole system, with HDD spun down and screen off takes around 200mA - with HDDs on but not seeking it's 250mA, and active it's about 500mA.

Hugo