Last Updated on October 1, 2023 by pg@petergamma.org
Raspberry Pi offers a power consumption table:
https://www.raspberrypi.com/documentation/computers/raspberry-pi.html
- to calculate theoretical battery running times.
- Explaining Computers tested typical bare board acitivity (RPF)
- The Python test code is explained at 5:48 in the video ( but not published)
- An example is for instance code for controlling a Pi weather station
- the code updates a LibreOffice spreadsheet until the battery is dead
- then he looks at the LibreOffice spreadsheet to find when the Pi stopped running
- Pi zero struggeled but manged to handle with LibreOffice calc
Tested was a minimal load battery life
- the test results are published in the video. at 11:51
- In the tests for explaining computers, the Pi 4 run much longer than in our tests with a 10 000 mAh
- We do not know the reason for that. We used a different power bank which is sold on Aliexpress, but is best-selling there.
- at 12:24 explaining computers tested Pi s with a lead acid battery
- for the Pi 4 running time was about 4 x of the battery life as with a 10 000 m Ah power bank
The MIRS did not do any battery tests with lead acid batteries. But if we want to be on the save site for instance with a Pi 5 (which unfortunately will not be available until the beginning of the year 2024 from most Pi sellers) we can start our tests with a lead acid battery.
- Another option which we did not have tested yet are uninterruptible power supplies for the pi:
- They are eventually better than power banks or lead acid batteries, since their software can be ajusted and optimized for the Pi. But they are not designed for this purpose, they are designed to have a battery in case there is no connection to the power adapter, and their capacity is small. We did not test yet this setup. One of those options is stackable so that multiple battery modules can added to a single Pi.