ok, so since no usb controller is hooked to this and it uses the board that hooks directly to the i/o pins it dosent "need" 5v then. after i posted i kept going back to the pi site and the video trying to see what i missed. i still see that this works without a boost converter, but i thnk the error ...

new to all this, checked the faq (which had no tech questions) and saw nothing... bare with me for a bit of backstory... no, really, VERY new to all this. i had been thinking of building something like this for a while, but theres always some obstacle (usually my ignorance being the biggest) yesterd...