Hello all,

I'm making plans for the deployment of my Bela project, and it would be enormously helpful to be able to gauge how many hours I can expect from the Bela and BBB.

I know this question must be very subjective, and it will depend on the application and specific setup, but do you have a general estimate of the lifespan of the BBB + Bela cape?

In particular - if I'm running the Bela + BBB for up to 8 hours a day, 6 or 7 days a week, is one or the other likely to quickly burn out? Are there any best practices I should follow, to ensure the longest possible lifespan?

In my particular scenario, I'll be outputting audio continuously, receiving signals into at least 3 or 4 analog inputs, and powering the board for 3 hours+/- at a time, maybe twice or three times a day. Do you think this is feasible?

Thank you as always!

10 days later

Never tried something so intensive/prolonged. I must say that I never had a BeagleBone or cape fail for intensive use (and I have been using them a lot of over the past three years). People have had Belas running in the hot Arizona desert, in the cold Siberia, on stage, and many installations(e.g.) and none of them has reported failures. Failures reported by users on this forum seems to be more about wrong voltages (5V on a BBB pin), mechanical failures (USB socket falling off), or manufacturing defects(dead on arrival), but not about prolonged/intensive usage.

Most likely things to fail are
a) Electrolytic capacitors
b) ceramic (X5R) capacitors.

The lifetime ratings of these is strongly linked to applied voltage and temperature. Without reviewing every part and making replacements on the board, you can't change voltage ratings vs applied (working) voltage. You might be able to have some control over operating temperature.

Estimating lifetime of the rest would require a more intensive design review for voltage deratings on capacitors and power derating on resistors.

In general the best thing you can do is keep temperatures as low as possible -- fans, shade from direct sunlight, don't bury in hot equipment consoles or racks. For example, a decrease of 10C will double the lifetime of an electrolytic capacitor. A similar relationship exists for ceramics in which a modest temperature change results in an exponential increase in lifetime.

Semiconductors are pretty stable as long as they are not operated continuously near their ratings, again, high temperature is bad.

Another thing is to avoid extreme humidity and rapid temperature changes (like don't pull it out of a freezer and mount it over a pot of boiling water).

If you keep everything within 40C, you can expect several years of continuous operation. As a rule of thumb, if you can survive in the environment in which Bela + BBB is mounted, then the electronics will continue to operate several years.

Some things that may degrade before catastrophic failure are things like noise and distortion specs. It's possible these degradations will become audible long before the device completely quits.

Thanks so much guys, this is all very helpful. I'm already using the device very intensively (two 3-4 hour sets a day, several days a week), and haven't had any problems so far. I'll report back if anything arises through more intensive use. Thanks again!