Raspberry Pi 4 Battery Pack UPS, V3Plus Expansion Board with 10000mAh Battery, Type-C Interface for RPI 5 4B 3B+ 3B 2B+

I’m giving it five stars cause it does what it’s supposed to do. I’m the idiot who has a pi 5 and wanted it to supply enough power with amps and it doesn’t barely supply enough power to power the five alone, the five and a screen and any peripherals or run any programs the five just shuts down because it’s not supplying enough amps but on my 4 b model, it works great power, the screen and everything

I replaced their original version 1 UPS with this new V3P version. It cleared all of the low voltage warnings I have always gotten with the V1 circuit. My Raspberry Pi 4B is loaded with a 4-Port USB to RS-232 Serial Adapter Hub, two RF wireless USB mice, and its Pimoroni Fan Shim cooling fan. Running OpenCPN navigation program, no problem. During my boat's diesel engine 600A start, pulling battery voltage supply to the board to very low, the UPS powers the RPi and its loads with no interruption or reset or Pi low voltage warnings. This upgrade to deliver a max output current of 3A, just like the official RPi AC wall plug power supply, has made all the difference. FYI, I supplied both the old and this new board from a 12VDC to 5VDC Dual-Port USB Car Charger Adapter, 4.8 Amp, 24W, using a Dual USB Male Jack Y Splitter Data Charger Cord to supply the two 2.4A channels in parallel as 4.8A to this UPS circuit. That is, supplying 5 x 4.8 = 24W to the board enables it to deliver 5.1V x 3A = 15.3W output power to the RPi. With the old V1 board output under load was 4.8-4.9VDC. With the new board it is 5.2V+. Perfect!

Electrically exceeded expectation, works very well. The documentation is spread all over the web. There are Python programs to read the status of the UPS, etc. on Github, under another makers name. Amazon won't let me post a link. Bottom line: I would buy it again.

I was really excited about this power module, but it has two flaws, one major, one not as big of a deal but still an oversight. First the big one: It does not have any low voltage protection for the Lithium battery. If you leave your Pi running, it will eventually brown out, however the circuit does not shut down to protect the battery. You can see the LEDs pulsing as it is trying to stay alive, far below a voltage it can operate at. The major problem with this is, it will absolutely kill the Lithium battery if you allow it to do this more than a couple times, as they cannot handle a deep discharge. I measured the cell after it had been left on overnight, and it was at 2.78v. The second problem is when you have it powering your Pi and also plugged in to USB to charge (which it will if you supply it 2.5A source), when you unplug the charging source, it briefly interrupts power to the Pi causing a reset. I feel like this could be easily solved by the circuit designer. If you're just looking for a battery backpack for your Pi to run for several hours, this will totally do the job, but dont plan on leaving it sitting around on battery, as it will eventually kill its' own battery from deep discharge. EDIT: The manufacturer contacted me and let me know they revised the board to fix these two issues, and they sent me a new one. It now doesn't drop out when unplugging or plugging in. Also it does properly shut down the circuit when the li-po gets down to 3.2v.

I've been working on a project that involves adding a UPS and Raspberry Pi 5 to an enclosure, so I've been doing some detailed testing of this UPS. Unfortunately I think I'm going to have to return it, as it struggles to stay charged with power attached and an idling Pi 5. If I use the Pi to do anything that increases current draw (e.g. running a music visualizer) it'll actually run down and turn off the Pi -- even with the power supply attached. But this still might be a good UPS for you! The good: - It's a great size, and very slim even with the battery attached - Two outputs - Much cheaper than alternatives - The UART interface gives detailed information (battery level and whether power is attached) The bad: - Can't sustain a load above ~1 amp, even when connected to USB power - Wastes quite a bit of power during normal plugged-in operation - Flashing LED on the back during normal operation - You have to solder the header for the UART interface If you're looking for a UPS for a load that's consistently < 1 amp, this could be a great choice! Just be aware that a higher load will run down the battery and eventually turn off your device. I played around with a number of power supplies, cables, and power monitors. No matter what I swapped out I could never get it to pull more than 1.8a from the input. This number was quite constant. Connected to a load averaging 1a (mostly-idle RPi 5 with a few things attached) the reported charge drifts up and down (as gauged by both the LEDs on the back and the report via UART), and sometimes even drifts so low that it turns off the power output. It never seems to power the pi from USB power exclusively; it always has the battery in the loop. This constant charging and discharging seems to be wasting about 0.8 amps (4 watts) of power. I would love to figure out how to get it to pull the 2.5-3a mentioned in the product description, and forward this power while charging the battery instead of dissipating so much of it.

Just got it a few hours ago and it's running a Pi4B and a small 1920x720 monitor no problem. The charge indicator dropped from 4 lights to 3 rather quickly but I'm assuming this is due to the manufacturer not charging the battery to 100% which is perfect. It was very easy to set up via USB A to C to both the Raspberry Pi and Monitor. At the time of writing the indicator dropped to 2 lights. If this can run the set up for around 4 hours I will be a happy camper - fingers crossed. The baseus 10k mah 22.5 watt ran about that long with this same set up. This all connected without issues and didn't take anything special aside from hooking up the USB ports, though I can't speak to the pogo pin method. Cost wise this aligns with a battery bank of about the same size though its a littler pricier than the Baseus previously mentioned, which is a fantastic bank. I hope the manufacturer sticks around with this product since I will likely be buying more. Highly recommend for now!

UPDATE: Makerfocus contacted me, and after several emails decided the best course of action was to send me a replacement for testing. This battery, with the limited testing I've done (playing youtube videos through Raspian; no hardcore gaming or 1080p videos yet) performs without the random low-power lightning icon I normally receive. I imagine, much like a cell phone, battery life wont be hours and hours on video or gaming, but: a.) So far it works EXACTLY as intended. b.) The company was fast to respond to my comments, and help troubleshoot everything to insure I didn't miss anything. (I've built a few of these but it was still nice to have them cover their bases.) Bottom line: I will be using Makerfocus for all my future RPI projects. Thank you Makerfocus! Technically does what it is supposed to do, however my Pi v3 runs in constant brown-out mode (low voltage icon stays on-screen) so I really can't use it with the Pi without potentially damaging my board. I've heard people mentioning a 'quality micro usb cable' but since nothing online really says what is a battery-friendly' cable versus a generic, I'll never know. This will unfortunately have to collect dust with my other old computer peripherals.

Bought the v3 model. I really tried to like this unit, especially for it's advertised functions. But in the end, it's not ready for the RPI4. The pros. For an rpi3, this works fine. Seamless. Plug it in wire it up and turn it on, and away it goes. Supplies enough voltage to not trigger the lower power warning. Battery life is fine, and the interchangable battery is a plus. The cons. The pin header for power is in the middle of the board, right under the battery. Without lots of double sided foam tape, you run the risk of puncturing the battery, or shorting the terminals. The biggest con is when used with the rpi4. I gave it all the best shots I could, wiring it direct to the pi header with 18 guage wire, 3 different usbc cables, different power supplies including the rpi foundation supply, different lipos, and 3 different rpi 4s(1gb 4gb 8gb) in all of the combinations of wired and cabled I could. All of them experienced the same issues. No peripherals. 1. The battery lights would climb to 4, then the power light breifly flashes and all the lights goes out. Tries again a few seconds later, same result. Sometimes it will boot, but mostly does the cycle indicated above. 2. Randomly, without a low power warning, it resets itself. This even happens when it's plugged into the wall. 3. When only on battery, during high loads such as boot up, it will randomly cause the pi itself to crash. Won't finish loading. Doesn't occur when it's plugged in. 4. When connected to an rpi4, the battery never completely recharges. The charge doesn't seem to exceed the power used, so even though it says it's charging, it isn't. without being passed through the UPS, all of the pis work fine. This leads me to believe the issues is an underperforming buck converter or overstated power envelope. It says 3a, but even with nothing attached, eventually it must think it's over heating, leading to a momentary loss in power while it resets. It doesn't shut down, simply restarts itself. When it does, it's a 50/50 chance it'll go into the power up cycle where it never starts. You can see this in the video. It doesn't get warm to the touch on any component. The pis were all updated with current firmware, and even with no load sitting idle, it still reboots. I did contact the manufacturer, who asked me for a video. They were quick to ask the question, but when I sent it, I never heard back. I really had high hopes for this as a power supply for a portable pi4. Sadly, it's not up to the task for working with an rpi 4.

基板、バッテリー共に、大きいですが、供給時間が長いので大変満足しています。