Alternative to powerboost?

Discussion about other hardware (including other Pi-like boards)
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Mazzy
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Joined: Tue Apr 04, 2017 4:11 am
Location: Aberdeen Scotland

Alternative to powerboost?

Post by Mazzy » Fri Apr 21, 2017 11:33 am

Good afternoon.

Following my silly question regarding the case where i did not realise that i needed the dmg not the colour case i'm bringing silly question number 2.

Is this a good/mediocre/meh alternative for the powerboost? i realise i might also need a dc to dc to boost the out voltage to 5v but i'd like to know if there is a technical reason everyone uses the powerboost or if it's just convenience.


LE:
forgot to mention, will be using a lipo 3.7 2500mah battery

if this has been asked already i apologize :P

Thank you :D

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RetroRocket
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Re: Alternative to powerboost?

Post by RetroRocket » Sun May 14, 2017 11:44 pm

You can gather a bit of info from a search, but my guess is that the powerboost, particularly the 1000c is a known quantity. It has been used, successfully and reliably. There are other pass-through charger/power step ups available, but they may not all work, or we may just not have enough data on it. @rodocop used these a few times with solid results, so you may consider for a cheaper option.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/291644400220?_t ... EBIDX%3AIT

I'm going to try one similar just to collect more data. Any 3.7V to 5V step up with a 1 amp supply should work to power the RPi0. Any feedback would be appreciated...

http://www.ebay.com/itm/291972755115?_t ... EBIDX%3AIT

I'd defer to the far more experienced and knowledgeable forum members though.

Mazzy
Posts: 6
Joined: Tue Apr 04, 2017 4:11 am
Location: Aberdeen Scotland

Re: Alternative to powerboost?

Post by Mazzy » Wed May 24, 2017 12:09 pm

Thanks for the reply :D

As a wee update, i've installed the charge board in the link with a dc to dc converter and it seemed to work fine, i've had some issues with my screen that are completely unrelated to power so have had to solder and desolder the screen to the pi multiple times, not sure if i touched anything or if the quality was just poor but the step-up converter has failed for some reason when i put the switch on the voltage drops to 1.3-1.4v not sure what i broke or how i broke it but the charge board itself seems fine, just the converter seems to have gone awry. The weird thing is with the power switch off (i use the cambel generic power supply version), i get 4.5v on the charge board output, with it on so with the system on it drops to ~3.5 which is too low for the step up to pick up, i've assumed it's the dc converter that causes this but would welcome any other suggestions as well.

I've now purchased a bangwood version that is on the wiki and will see if changing the 2 boards to this helps and gets the gbz back to working, or back to power working and screen not working, or magically everything working afterwards (one can dream).

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