FWIW, I ran my Pi5 yesterday for about 4 hours using the power socket I discussed.
My 24 AH LiFePo4 battery went from 91% to 89% charge. (Not hugely scientific, but suffice to say the Pi 5 didn’t suck down a lot of power.)
Not a single warning message from the Pi about low voltage, etc.
IMHO, my Pi5 is going to be a great addition to my portable kit. I’m still looking for an acceptable smallish monitor for it, but I assume that’s the easy part. I expect this setup will draw a fraction of the power I used to use with my Macbook Pro 15” (2018, a real power pig). I have a 3D printed case that fits the Pimoroni NVMe base on its way, so that’ll enable me to put the 5 into a nice protective case and tuck it into the big case where I stow my portable rig (Icom IC-7200).
Anyway, it’s nice to have options. The thought of using an AC inverter with my portable rig so I could use the official power supply was crazy. (DC to AC and back again is stupid.)
I’ll test this same setup with an external USB 3 SSD as well, and I’ll report back here.
Cheers,
Ken van Wyk
Armata Scientia
toggle quoted message
Show quoted text
On Mar 7, 2024, at 1:18?PM, Kenneth R. van Wyk <ken@...> wrote:
I’m running a Pi 5 here, with pretty good successes. It is my intention to build it into a portable PC for radio operations (e.g., POTA, vacations).
One concern I had was regarding power when I’m away from 120V AC. I know it’s been discussed here a lot that we have to use the official Pi 28 Watt charger and such.
HOWEVER, I have a LiFePo4 + solar battery system I built. I included in it a socket with 2 USB-C PD ports rated at 30 Watts each. (I use it to charge my MacBook Pro often.)
I just booted up my Pi 5 on that port and got no warnings about low voltages at all. It just runs. I see no difference between this and the factory power adapter.
I’m not running anything on the USB ports, so the power draw isn’t that much anyway. My configuration is Pi 5 with 8 Gb, Pi OS, Pimoroni NVMe Base board with an NVMe (Sabrent) 1 TB boot drive.
I’ll report back if I encounter any problems, but so far so good.
The socket I put in my LiFePo4 box is this one from Amazon ($20.99):
https://a.co/d/5i1SGfZ
73 de K0RvW
