A package arrived today, with the last parts of my InfinityPi: Portable Power! Therefore I made a little test run :)
Portable Power
The parts for portable power are nothing special:
- 6600mAh LiPo
- Adafruit PowerBoost 1000 Charger
- Sparkfun LiPo Fuel Gauge
The LiPo has a voltage of 3.7V, but the Pi needs 5V. Therefore I use the Adafruit powerbooster, which will converts the output to 5V. Furthermore it has a load-sharing circuit built-in, which means that I can load the battery while it is in use. The gauge is not mandatory, but it is very useful, because with its help, the Pi can measure the voltage and display a warning if the power goes down.
Test Run
For a quick test, I just connected the LiPo with the Powerbooster, which in turn is connected to the pi. Furthermore I connected the demo gamepad from the last blog post to the pi. After a few seconds RetroPie is running and I can play some games with this little gamepad.
To be continued
This was just a little test of the most important components. Next time I will continue with the actual gamepad logic and a little PCB for the buttons.