i have problem how i connect the raspberry pi 4 to the vex battery ?
Im wondering if i could power pi by connecting it to the vex via USB
You don’t. Unless you have the electronics knowledge to do this without asking, don’t even try, because you will probably damage your battery and/or Pi in the process.
The USB port on the Brain does not output power.
Your best bet will probably involve the legacy ports (which supply 5 V), but it is quite possible the Pi will draw too much current to rely on the legacy ports.
3 Likes
well, barin is only partially correct. while the usb does give power, it may not carry enough wattage for powering the pi 4. Check if it works, and if not, get a vex approved power converter
I’m not really sure what you mean by “vex approved power converter”, or if such a product exists.
I agree with @Barin - powering an RPi with a VEX battery is possible but not worth the risk if you don’t know what you’re doing.
Even if you do know what you’re doing, it’d likely be cheaper and easier to just get a USB battery pack and power the Pi with that.
5 Likes
Is it okay to use buck converter . It converts the voltage of Vex battery to the voltage suitable for Raspberry pi.
Lm2596 is the buck converter
Again, if you have to ask, you probably shouldn’t actually try to do this.
3 Likes
I’m ask because i have a project which is building a rover with raspberry pi, camera,sensors and I’m gonna add solar panels to it . So my question was how to connect the vex battery with raspberry pi and i come up with buck converter
Just use a USB power bank as @holbrook suggested. It will be much easier, and the chances of breaking something will be much less.
3 Likes
Also, if the V5 battery is not communicating with the brain, it will shutdown after 5 minutes.
6 Likes
Assuming you have a 12V → 5V buck converter handy, it’s not too difficult to power the 5V raspberry pi with a V5 smart port. Our team uses this converter to do this.
Once you strip the wires on a V5 smart cable, you can tell which wires are which by orientating the connector’s pins towards you with the cable going down from it and the wires will be as below. Connect ground and 12V to the input of the converter, and connect the output to the 5V and ground pins of the raspberry pi’s GPIO (see this website for a detailed pinout, if you’re using a Raspi 1, then only pay attention to the first 13 rows.)
From left to right: positive data (RS-485 A), negative data (RS-485 B), ground, and 12V.
After doing this, your raspberry pi should turn on after being plugged into the brain! If you want to talk to the serial on the smart port, you can use a MAX3485 module. Be aware that it is powered by 3.3V, so use the 3.3V pin on the raspberry pi’s GPIO.
4 Likes
Adafruit.com makes small LiPo battery packs that you should look at. If the Pi is programmed to spend lots of time in sleep mode except when matches are being played, the LiPo will last all day. PiZero can do this for weeks in the wild, I have one as a garden sensor that runs for six weeks.
2 Likes
This topic was automatically closed 365 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.