I wanted to power my raspberry pi zero using a battery
I had a power switch and a power boost connected to the a lithium battery that was powering my raspberry pi zero
It was giving it power using the 5v GPIO pin and the ground… everything was working fine
However, when I plugged the speaker phat. The speaker phat’s LEDs stopped working…
My project requires I power it using a battery not a mini usb cable…
Am I not able to do this with speaker phat?
What’s the maximum current capacity of the power boost? Between a Pi Zero, an amplified speaker and LEDs you’re going to have a reasonable peak current demand. If the boost circuit can’t keep up, all sorts will go awry.
Which PowerBoost, the 500 or 1000? I have a 1000c running a Pi A+ with a Sense Hat and a couple of 10 MM LEDs. I’m displaying a scrolling message on the Sense Hat LED matrix.
Also, what is the MAH rating of the battery attached to the PowerBoost? The battery’s max current may be limiting what the PowerBoost can deliver.
I think is a power boost 500…
It’s a 2000 lithium 3.7 but I have a 6600 one I could try
It powers it up and plays sound but the led’s don’t work…
I think it flipped an internal breaker because the LEDs stopped working even when I power it via Ian… they didn’t work until I resintalled the software…
The Powerboost 500 limits you to about 500ma. Thats plenty to drive a Pi Zero, might not be enough to also drive the speaker phat though. Especially if you turn the volume up. @gadgetoid would better know how much power the speaker phat needs to run. Doing some quick math, to calculate the current, I = the square root of P divided by R. 2 watts divided by 8 ohms is 0.25, the square root of that is 0.5 A, or 500 ma. Just for the speaker. That’s at full volume. Still add on what the Pi uses and the Speaker phat to do its thing like drive the LEDs and it adds up quickly.
You could try the 6600 battery, as a test. In theory all that should do for you is give you a longer run time on battery. You have to dig down in the specks to see what steady state current a battery can provide. Some are better than others.
I’m using a 6600 MAH battery with my Powerboost 1000c, mainly so I don’t have to worry about it running low with extended use. Like if I forget to recharge it every time I use it. I had the space for a bigger battery so I used one.
Never mind… I got it working…
I’m guessing something was off on my initial soldering but it’s working great now https://instagram.com/p/BfrlCViHqY1/
Great, enjoy. =) Hopefully it keeps working.