Is it safe to power a raspberry pi from battery's?

Have raspberry pi 3 w/7inch monitor. Need more voltage. Raspberry pi 3 needs exactly 5 volts or it will throttle. That's why PSU with starter kit is 5.25 volts. I tried my 15.000 m Amp hour battery. It doesn't

drain fast, but it does not supply enough voltage for Pi3 not to throttle.

Can pi 3 over volt. How far is safe if it can.

Eric Kazer

I believe the problem is the current not the voltage. 15,000 mAh is a measure of current over time. I bet it delivers only 1.0 Amp. A Pi 3 needs more especially with a 7 inch display! If you have two usb connections, each is 1.0 Amp. Then drive one for the Pi 3 and separately drive the 7 inch display.

Clem

Battery pack has 2 1 amp outs, and 1 2.1 amp out. The pi3 is in the 2.1 amp out on the battery pack. When I was running pi2 it was ok. I should try putting the monitor and the audio amplifiers on their own 1 amp usb power outputs. The battery it's self might not be enough.

Thank You.

It was amperage. I connected the Raspberry Pi3 to the 2.1 amp USB by its self & the monitor to one of the 1 amp USB, then the 2 amplifiers to the last 1 amp USB. The volt drop stopped. No more colored box. No more CPU speed drop which was awful. I'm surprised at how critical .1 volt drop is to pi 3. That's all it was dropping. Now I can run games like Street Fighter movie, Metal Slug 4, Metal Slug X,3, etc..

Thanks again,

Eric

Sorry, but I could not resist the itch.. Today I ordered a RPi3 board and plan to use it as permanent bound to the grid. I think that the 5V power banks sold everywhere will work properly and also filter the intermittent power downs (easiest way to restart the router ) and the high consumption spikes.

Will have to test if such power bank in between will neglect all the above issues.

500mA-1A continuous drain assumes that 2.5-5A spikes should be ok.

Anyway... I wanted to write that it is shame to have so many shields and not to have proper power. I am a little disappointed that I read about such issues. Currently I'm using another brand of single board computer which accepts 9 and 12V power supply and has battery charger/step up supply (according to specifications it is safe to use 6-15V). Battery (3.7V) is advised if low quality PSU and GSM module (or other high spike accessories) are used.

Tested it also with "rusty" GSM battery that was so empty that it was unable to start charging and the current was auto adjusted to the battery specifications. Can run from the 3.7 GSM battery.

I am starting to think that the quad 64bit CPU Win10 board might not be as good as I initially thought.

The PiBorg (described in the upper posts) is another good idea, (I admit-never worked with Pi) but the 15% CPU load does not ring a bell. I thought that the CPU frequency is more important than the load. Anyway the old Pi CPU has rating as the Pi Zero (assuming not lot of additional power is required) which is 160mA (Wikipedia). If CPU is using low multiplier than it can probably last longer than the regular.

The Sanyo batteries are also a good choice but probably has to be considered that NiMH batteries have normal voltage around 1.2 volt (average and 4*1.2=4.8) and the OKI chip is rated 7-36V so the chip might be stepping down only the initial period and then most of the time doing nothing (5mA consumption is neglectable). Anyway over voltage protection is mandatory (4*1.4=5.6 and it is a little uncertain if all boards will handle it). 0.1 capacity (and less) drain per hour is nearly ideal condition. For car battery- the Borg is perfect. With the Borg also regular batteries are applicable.

The old brand, that I currently use, tested comparable board and the power was less than 1W continuous which is nearly as Pi Zero.

Battery pack for Borg: 2.7*1.2*4=13W

Pi Zero is less than 1W. So test has to be valid.

Anyway- good night (have to sleep. it's 1am local) and sorry if i offended someone. Pi is nice, but doesn't seem to be portable and jerk proof . When I test it I might apologize

I am running the same setup as you are, pi 3 with 7" touch screen as well as a mouse and keyboard. I am using the 15000 mAh SNUG power bank which outputs 5.0V at 3.0A and i can run my setup for a full 12 hours with constant use. No problems detected thus far.

Hello ! I am trying to build this kind of setup for my first time. I'd like to make a video game emulator station using Retropie, the RPI 3 and the 7" touch screen with a battery so I can play outside.

But I also want to know if I can plug it on my screen using HDMI, so it'd be a mix between portable and desk console.

Any advice on where/what to buy ?

Also, how did you manage with your battery ? Did you let it outside or you found a way to build a little something attached to your screen case ?

Thanks a lot, I'm quite nervous about this project so a little help would be really appreciated ^^

The problem is current and voltage. As the current drawn by the Raspi increases, it causes a voltage drop across the USB cable between the PSU and the Pi. The higher the current drawn, the lower the voltage reaching the Pi. The 'Universal' PSU overcomes this problem by increasing the supply voltage a little above 5V (but, within the rated Pi spec.) and by using heavier copper conductors in its connecting cable to reduce the voltage drop at higher currents. This is the only PSU that I now use. The Pi 3 has WiFi enabled, out of the box, and this is often sufficient to cause problems with standard 5V PSUs and USB 'charger' cables even when using 0.5 metre cable lengths.

I am successfully running a Pi3, a GeChic, 1920 x 1080, USB powered 15" monitor, a Focusrite 2i4 audio interface providing 50v phantom power to condenser microphones and a wireless keyboard and mouse. The screen, audio interface and keyboard/mouse dongle are plugged into the Pi3 USB ports. The power comes from a RavPower RP-PB13 (14,000mAh) phone charger. I connect to a BlueTooth portable speaker or a mains powered amp and a pair of studio monitors using the Pi 3's built-in BlueTooth capability except when using the Focusrite for monitoring (via headphones, for portability).

Even with the coiled leads supplied with the RavPower, the multi-coloured square low voltage warning was usually present. The answer is to use 10cm charger USB cables (yes, 10cm is not a misprint). The square appears briefly during boot and when the Focusrite is plugged in, but there are no further problems. I might be able to lose even those by connecting the screen via a powered USB Hub supplied from the second RavPower USB outlet (I have built special cables to supply 5v from USB ports to a range of power plugs), but this is not worth the effort.

If you want to use standard mains 5v PSUs (with a USB socket rather than a captive cable) you might find that a 10cm cable will do the job. Of course, you will need an extension mains lead to get the socket and PSU within 10cm of the Pi.

I've designed a PowerHAT power controller that is made specifically to make a HAT compatible (40 pin gpio) portable.  It properly manages charging a li-ion battery (included) and the on/off operations by a switch and/or software control for when you poweroff or when the battery gets low. You can check it out here:  PowerHAT. 

Terry