I want to use one power suplly which will power everything: raspberry pi 2w and two Nema 17 5.6V 1A stepper motors. What can I use?
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Hi @Martin282919,
I personally wouldn’t power a Pi and Motors off the same power rail unless there was some form of voltage regulation between the Source and the Pi.
Mainly due to the potential for the motors to make the power source unstable compared to what the Pi is expecting.
The Pi can use up to 2A and combined with the 2x 1A motor a 4.5A supply such as this should be just enough.
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Thank you Aaron for your answer. So best solution is to use two seperate 2.5A 5V power supplies?
Hey @Martin282919,
You could use two different supplies at 2.5A, that would work just fine.
I believe Aaron’s point, however, was that you could use a single supply but you should have a voltage regulator of some sort in between the supply and the Pi Zero 2W.
This is because the motors can cause slight variations in power supply voltage that the RPi may not be designed to handle. A voltage regulator will do exactly as it says on the tin, it will regulate the voltage! So the Pi will have a much more stable voltage source to run from.
Hope this helps!
Hi Zach
A 5V supply via a 5V regulator to get a regulated 5V ???
These days there might be some regulators around which would manage this but not of the linear variety. These have a “drop out voltage” which means the input needs to be this much higher than the wanted output. That means the MINIMUM voltage as anything less than this will result in a corresponding dip in output.
The 2A + could be a bit embarrassing for some of these too without some additional circuitry and components required.
Easier to go with 2 separate supplies. One for the motor(s) and one for the critical bits. That way you can supply the motor(s) with whatever voltage they require.
Cheers Bob
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For my project I will need to connect LED’s also. So I will need also 3 supply and it will be quite too much quite:sweat_smile:
I have also an unused 24V 15A power supply. Can I use step down converter 24V to 5V and connect everything to it, probably LED’s will be 5V also.
Someone suggested to use 12V LED’s. So in this case I will be using 2 separate converters: one 24V to 5V for stepper motors, adafruit hat and raspberry zero 2w and one 24V to 12V for LED’s. Is it safe in general?
Hi Martin
Should be OK. Just watch the dc to dc converters. Some of these only have a modest current capability, in the range of 600mA to 1A. The converters have to be capable of operating the expected load.
Cheers Bob
Hi Martin,
It should be fine. Pololu offers a variety of stepdown regulators that you may be interested in for this.
These both should be well equipped for the task.
