Hello everyone,
First of all (a rather long intro) - I'm not sure if this is the right place to ask a question like this. If it's not, do let me know. It's a very very *very* basic question - mostly because my knowledge of electronics is also very basic. The last time I had anything to do with them was back in college, and even back then I didn't understand a lot about what I was doing. But after watching most of Ben Heck show's episodes, I've decided that I want to build a handheld gaming system using a Raspberry Pi Zero.
So anyway - I have most of it kind of figured out. I'll use the Raspberry Pi Zero, I got this screen that takes 5v voltage and connects via HDMI, and I'm planning on using the guts of a SNES controller (since I have tons of these) as an input (it also takes 5v; I'll should be able to use the GPIO on Raspberry Pi and I'll just have to write some driver for it).
I'm trying to figure out the best way of powering the whole thing. I'm kind of afraid of using lithium-ion batteries, because I don't want them to accidentally explode or something like that. So I've figured that I'll simply use batteries. And now the question is - does that make any sense?
I could use 4x AA battery. That will be 6V with ~2500mAh (I think). I'm estimating that the whole unit will use ~1A. So that should give me ~2.5h of work (which is fine by me, I probably won't use the thing a lot anyway - right now I just want to build it). However, I'm worried about the voltage. It will be 6V, but from what I understand, that drops when the batteries lose charge. I was thinking of using a DC-DC power converter like this one: LM2941CS/NOPB - TEXAS INSTRUMENTS - ADJUSTABLE LDO VOLTAGE REGULATOR, 5V TO 20V, 1A, TO-263-5 | Newark element1. Will that work? Will it be able to take whatever voltage the batteries give out (even if it's as low as 3V) and produce 5V output?
Or is there some option better than the batteries, but still fairly safe to use in very unexperienced hands? 
Thanks!
Tom
