Disable usb power protection on Linux (raspbian) - raspberry-pi

Question

I'm playing arround with a Raspberry pi zero but it has some issues powering my WIFI dongle.
Nov 21 21:42:49 raspberrypi kernel: [ 456.466068] usb 1-1.1: rejected 1 configuration due to insufficient available bus power
It works, but it requires some manual labour to to turn it on:
echo 1 > /sys/bus/usb/devices/1-1.1/bConfigurationValue
In my case, this enables the device and then all is well. However, I need to repeat this step after each boot (tried init script, no luck yet).
My question is how to solve this problem. Preferably i'd just like to disable the power check (if possible) and just have the kernel configure the device.
Is this possibe/is there a better solution?

Answer 1

I had a similar problem (my router sometimes acted weird and my Pi didn't reconnect) and I use a script that checks every minute if the Pi has a wifi connection, if not it "reboots the wifi". (Got it from this tutorial http://alexba.in/blog/2015/01/14/automatically-reconnecting-wifi-on-a-raspberrypi/)
#!/bin/bash
# The IP for the server you wish to ping (8.8.8.8 is a public Google DNS server)
SERVER=8.8.8.8
# Only send two pings, sending output to /dev/null
ping -c2 ${SERVER} > /dev/null
# If the return code from ping ($?) is not 0 (meaning there was an error)
if [ $? != 0 ]
then
# Restart the wireless interface
ifdown --force wlan0
ifup wlan0
fi
Although it probably is not the most elegant solution you could just follow this tutorial and replace
ifdown --force wlan0
ifup wlan0
with this I guess:
echo 1 > /sys/bus/usb/devices/1-1.1/bConfigurationValue
But since you say that you say that you just need to run this script on boot and it works until you power the Pi back off again making a simple python script like
import os
os.system("echo 1 > /sys/bus/usb/devices/1-1.1/bConfigurationValue")
and making sure it starts on boot by adding this line in the /etc/rc.local file just above the exit 0 in that file:
sudo python /path/to/the/python/script/this_script.py
This should do the trick although I'm pretty sure the Pi has a good reason disabling your Wifi dongle (I'm pretty sure you could 'burn out' your Pi by using to much current if there was no protection). What Wifi dongle are you using and what are your powering you Pi with? I'm sorry for my not so clear answer, I'm just starting to get into the Pi but I hope I was at least of some help.