I’m looking to deploy a RPi remotely and need to power off a battery and Solar setup, so will need a power input of 15-11v if possible? I’m also running a second device which the RPi will control needing a power source of 6-9v. Looking for advise on the DFRobot DFR1015 Buck Converter to power these? As the RPi is a USB power connection, can you connect directly to power or do you need a USB cable connected?
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Hi @Shane233936.
Have a look at my Borg Cube project re power supply issues and solution - note I didnt have the solar issue, but check the guides as there one there re powering a Pi with a solar system.
Specifically this part
I realised early on that I would need a big PSU for the LEDs etc and would have an unfortunate set of voltage requirements, namely 12V, 5V, and 3V3.
Main power supply - a 12-volt Sealed Lead Acid (SLA) batteries (we are in the bush at a Scout camp - no mains power within cooee)
12 volts - from battery Power amplifier for the audio Input to a 12v - 5v Buck converter 5 volts - from the buck converter Pico Glowbits Neopixels 3-watt RGB LEDs High voltage side of a level converter for the LEDs 3.3 volts - from 3v3 output of Pico MP3 player (so I can directly connect the UART data from the Pico) Low voltage side of the level converterAlso, regarding the power, is the need to be able to connect the programmer Raspberry 3 to the Pico, while the big PSU is in use also. Without the smoke getting out of either one.
Solution: RTFM (https://datasheets.raspberrypi.com/pico/pico-datasheet.pdf - page Section 4.5 on page 19) and wire up the power to the Pico with a Schottky diode in line to the VSYS pin. And build in a good solid common earth point for everything to connect to.
Result: can safely power up from the battery, and can connect/disconnect the Raspberry Pi programmer, without disturbing the Pico (or killing the Raspberry Pi).
Cheers
Murray
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I would look for an alternative to use as the controller as the RPi uses a large amount of power compared to micro controllers. Of course it can still be done, and I don’t know what the energy usage of the device being controlled is.
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Hi Shane,
Welcome to the forum 
Can you tell us a little bit more about what the Raspberry Pi will be controlling? As @Craig82832 has mentioned this project will be a lot more challenging to keep powered if you are running a Single Board Computer, if there is a chance that a powerful microcontroller could instead do the job the power draw of the system will be far lower.
Which model of Raspberry Pi do you have? You can view the power requirements for each here.
For comparison the Raspberry Pi Pico microcontroller will likely only draw less than 100mA while running.
