Raspberry Pi Lightning Bolt

[snakeyes]

Raspberry Pi 3B+ with ARpiCADE 3.82. Everything is working great, except from time to time I get the lightning bolt icon in the top right corner. I believe this means that the Raspberry Pi is underpowered so I checked the power supply and the RaspberryJAMMA is getting 5.07v / 12.15v. I get the lightning bolt more often when certain emulators are running. Any ideas?

[dee2eR]

You can safely bump your 5v up a bit more, the Pi3 is actually rated at 5.1v. Between 5.1 and 5.2 should get rid of the lightning bolt entirely.

Seeing it more often in some emulators than others is just the differing amount of power the Pi is using in those particular emulators (or even different games). If you only see it occasionally you're probably not seeing too many ill effects but under the right conditions you can really loose performance as the Pi will throttle itself to deal with the under-volting.

[snakeyes]

The voltage was actually sitting at 5.01v. The lightning bolt consistently went away once I got it up to 5.11v. I can't independently control the 12v so that has now jumped up to 12.38v. Thank you!

[guntherm]

How do you bump it up in a cocktail table? I see it every time I go into games

[dee2eR]

Arcade power supplies typically have adjustable 5v on them. When you adjust it make sure to measure the voltage at the PCB as you do it to account for any drops across the power wiring. Be careful adjusting it, if you go too high it will start to kill things.

If you don't have a multi meter it's a good idea to get one, a cheap one will cost you very little but be quite useful in this hobby.

[guntherm]

Multi-meter showed mine as only running at 4.9v. I upped mine to 5.2 and all lighting bolts have disappeared so far, running last few hours no shutdowns, or any issues noted.