Hello World,
Last Week I made a Wireless Power Raspberry Pi. I also made that night a Battery Powered and Qi Charged Raspberry Pi. I would like to show my test setup to see if it would work. This is by no means a good way to do this but I wanted to test the concept with parts I had laying around.
I took two batteries and soldered them in series.
One iPhone 3GS battery and a iPod Touch battery. Both at 3.7V for a total of 3.7V + 3.7V = 7.4V.Never parallel a Li-POL Battery with another battery to increase capacity as they can explode, start on fire, etc. This is very dangerous as most of them can only handle 300mA to 1000mA total.
I taped them together so they would be more compact!
Then I soldered them to a TI LP38690-5.0 Regulator. http://www.ti.com/product/lp38690 This is a 5V regulator and very easy to use! Basically 5.5V to 10V input and a regulated 5.0V output with 1A load current. The dropout voltage is low at 450mV.
I wired the 7.4V to a switch and then to the Vin and wired the GND wire to the GND tab. Vout was the 5V output wire that goes to the Raspberry Pi that comes from the wireless eval kit output and the battery when switched in. I used two 1N4007 Diodes on the evaluation output pins to prevent the battery from powering and backfeeding into the eval kit. The eval kit was ground via the regulator as well. This setup allowed me to use the switch to turn on the Raspberry Pi, as well as place the Raspberry Pi on the Transmitter Pad and power the Raspberry Pi.
Now when I have the battery off, and the QiPi on the pad, the Raspberry Pi boots up. If I remove it with the battery switch off, the Raspberry Pi shuts off. Now when I turn the battery on, and I remove the Raspberry Pi, the Raspberry Pi stays on.
This is not the best method at all for charging a battery nor powering a Raspberry Pi. This was only a test setup and should/will not be used in a final product. I will be using a battery charging managment system that stops charging the battery when full. I just wanted to showcase a working model of the battery powered QiPi.
Here is a video of the setup working.
Enjoy!
Top Comments