Alessandruino, this is for you. I noticed in the shoutbox that you were questioning how to properly power a Pi for robotics. 

So I've been working on the same thing and hope this info might give you a lot of help. 

 

Bill of materials:

- 2 or 3 cell Lipo Battery 3000mAh or above (I've been using a 5000mAh)

-USB Hub (I use one with a 5V 2A input)

-USB Micro cable (cheap cheap cheaper the better)

-3A UBEC (A really efficient voltage regulator circuit, can take lots of current and voltage, boils it down to a powerful 5 or 6V)

 

Flow goes: Battery-->Mains Switch (on the GND side)-->UBEC--->HUB--->Pi

From HUB, you can power cams, Arduino or other peripherals.

At UBEC, you can splice off power for servos or other robotic actuators.  

You can stack UBECS in parallel, but will need to consider a bigger battery to serve better current. 

 

I hope this helps and I haven't assumed too much! :)

-D

Alessandruino

11 years 2 months ago

Thanks a lot DJ...now the hardest parts is to find all the parts !! :D

I don't know if you sorted this out, but today you can find USB powerpacks of 15.000 mAh. Should last 7 hours with 2.1A load at 5V. But you need good quality, since some of the cheap ones don't provide enough voltage. I tested with a 2600mAh. It was good enough until I connected the Rasperry Pi camera.