Looking for suggestions on power supply to run my Pi in my 4wd please.
Cheers,
Jack.
Hey Jack,
That’s a great question.
You will power your Raspberry Pi via the microUSB port onboard. It requires 5V and you should make sure it can draw up to 2A - which should be sufficient for a few USB devices too.
You could use your 12V Auxiliary port with a Car to USB charger and a USB to Micro-USB cable to power the Pi. This will work fine as long as your car is running. However, it will cut power when your car is not turned on, which wouldn’t be the best for your Pi/SD Card.
To get around this, I’d recommend a LiPO battery, alongside a PowerBoost Module and the Car to USB connections mentioned above.
This way you can have your Pi powered via the Car to USB, and have power switched to the battery (via the PowerBoost Module) when power is turned off (you would likely create a safe shutdown procedure when car power is turned off).
I’d love to see how you get along with this one. Automotive projects always capture my interest.
Thanks Aidan, The project is an in vehicle ham radio digital station over HF radio. It means that I don’t need a laptop etc. I have the 7" screen for the Pi and the software runs a treat even using the touch screen for some functions. my main concern was the supply specs for the Pi as to tolerated supply voltage variation.
Looking at the LiPo batteries, does not look like they can supply 2.5amps? The boost board looks good though. I can run the system from the vehicles aux battery which won’t suffer voltage sag when starting the engine. I need to give more thought on my vehicle installation.
Cheers,
Jack.
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