One of the great things about the Raspberry Pi is that it is easy to go portable. What is even better is that because the Pi can accept 5V it will work with lots of power accessories designed for mobile phones and tablets.
In previous posts I have run a few of my Raspberry Pis from standard AA batteries and a generic Li-on Power Pack. This week I tested a RAVPower 10400mAh Power Bank to see how long it could power a Pi running my standard battery test.
RAVPower Power Bank (RP-PB07)
The RP-PB07 (also known as Dynamo On-the-Go Power Bank) box contained the following items :
- Power Bank unit
- 2 USB-to-MicroUSB cables
- Flannel bag (felt pouch)
- Instruction manual
and has the following features
- 10400mAh capacity
- 2 USB output ports (1A and 2A)
- 1 MicroUSB input port for charging
- 4 stage blue LED status bar
- On/Off switch
As with most Power Banks its comes half charged. This might seem strange but Li-on battery performance is maximised if they are stored at 40-50% capacity. I plugged it into an Asus Nexus 7 2A MicroUSB charger and let it charge to 100%. Due to their huge capacity these sort of batteries take a while to charge. The blue status LEDs let me know when it was ready.
Test Setup
Once fully charged I was ready to start the test. The Pi was setup with the following equipment :
- Raspberry Pi (Rev 1)
- BerryClip addon board
- SD card with Raspbian “Wheezy” (2013_02_09)
- RAVPower 10400mAh Power Bank
- USB to MicroUSB cable (as supplied with the Power Bank)
- Python script as used in my AA battery shootout post
The Pi was networked and I used Putty to connect to it from PC. This was used to set off the Python script. The current uptime was updated in the Putty window and I just had to wait until it stopped working.
Predicted Battery Stamina
My eBay 12000mAh Power Bank lasted 18 hours 40 minutes (1120 minutes) so a rough guess would be that 10400mAh would give me (10400/12000) x 1120 minutes which equals 16 hours 10 minutes (970 minutes).
Comparing to my AA data the predicted time would be between 14 hours 50 minutes and 16 hours 40 minutes.
Results
The RAVPower pack lasted 17 hours 55 minutes (1075 minutes). This was almost an hour longer than I predicted based on past experience. The Pi isn’t doing much in this test but it showed the RAVPower was better per mAh than the larger generic power pack I bought from eBay.
It’s a great addition to my battery collection and when it’s not powering a Pi I can use it to charge a phone or tablet.
The RAVPower RP-PB07 10400mAh External Backup Battery Pack is available from Amazon :
Photos
Here is a set of additional photos I took of the battery pack, its accessories and my Pi setup:
10 Comments
Hi Matt,
thanks for your review.
My question is: Can you use the two outputs while charging the Power Bank (for example in the car) ?
I’ve just tested it. It appears to shut off the outputs while it is charging. Would be nice if it didn’t but I guess it’s done to ensure the charging process is done properly.
Or to protect from self recharging . It’s very easy to connect Output to Input with USB to Micro USB. I have one 12000 mhA Power Bank too (i made something like GPS – Tracker with Raspberry Pi for may car) but the same problem – can’t use the outputs while charging in the car 🙁
Hi Pencho,
Exactly what I am looking for too.
I can tell you the NEW Trent 5000 mAh external pack has the same (maybe protection), charging and draining is not supported here.
Have you found a solution then?
BR
I have a similar setup – however I would say using it in the real world, pushing video – wifi, http remote, etc I get approximately 3 Hours.
of course like your website but you need to take a look at the spelling on quite a few
of your posts. A number of them are rife with spelling problems
and I find it very bothersome to inform the reality however I will surely come back again.
Please don’t. “Data Clinic Ltd” are spammers who can’t even spell themselves yet have the nerve to critise my posts. I would avoid Data Clinic Ltd as I suspect Data Clinic Ltd provide an awful customer experience and clearly don’t understand the danger of spamming other people’s sites in order to try and promote their own. Like SEO? How about this for some SEO …. Data Clinic Ltd terrible customer service, complaints, poor workmanship. I could go on. Perhaps you would prefer me to stop? Yes? Good. Now **** off.
More a question than a response. I’ve been browsing , looking for something to keep my cyber-shot battery charged while hiking and I’m very interested in this power bank. The 10400mAh. If the power bank is charging by solar power while hiking and I only use the power bank on and off. say at night while i sleep. Could you give me an est
imated amount of time it would last? The solar I’ve been thinking about getting outputs 5v.
Thanks.
It depends on how much energy your solar panel is going to deliver during the day and how much energy your camera uses. It’s impossible to predict with those estimates. I would start by finding out the capacity of the camera battery and how many days/hours you would expect it to last. Then find out the estimated current delivered by the solar panel. Then you have a go at working out if the panel is going to deliver more current at 5V over time than the camera is going to use.
Thank you, I’ll look into it.