Pi Won't Boot with Powerboost

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Titan001
 
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Pi Won't Boot with Powerboost

Post by Titan001 »

The other day I bought an Adafruit Powerboost 1000 basic in an attempt to more adequately power my Raspberry Pi 4 2gig.

My goal was to be able to power it with a usb to usbc cable running from a usb 2.0 port on a laptop, through the powerboost, and into the usbc port on the pi.

My initial boot was promising. I was able to spend around 30 minutes with almost no slowdown, the results were much better than when I had powered it from the cable alone. However, when I came back after shutting the Pi down, it wouldn't boot. The OS would begin to load and then it would crash, resulting in a boot loop. I got a second usb cable and stuck some gpio connectors on the end attempting to power the pi thru the pins as well as the usbc port, but it still wouldn't boot. I tried swapping the cables' places, sticking the powerboost to the cable that ran to the gpio pins. No luck. Finally, I tried the combination of the official usbc power supply as well as the powerboost going to the gpio pins, and that was what worked.

Then something really weird happened. I ran a test, attempting to power it off of ONLY the usb to gpio connector cable with NO powerboost... and that powered it, albeit extremely badly.

I would really prefer not having to lug the official usbc cable around with me, as the focus of my project is portability. I am baffled as to why a lesser power source will allow the pi to boot while the powerboost used on the exact same cable will not. Any advice is welcomed!

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dastels
 
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Re: Pi Won't Boot with Powerboost

Post by dastels »

First of all, don't power it with two supplies at once. That's not going to end well.

I'm confused when you say
cable running from a usb 2.0 port on a laptop, through the powerboost, and into the usbc port on the pi
. The PowerBoost basic just converts a battery voltage to 5v on a USB connector.

The failure to boot might have been due to a run down battery not being able to handle the initial surge of booting.

The Pi is a rather complicated bit of hardware and does need a bit of care with powering it. The Pi 4 is more power hungry than previous models. That's the reason for a new, higher power, supply.

The only way what you're saying makes sense to me is if you have a PowerBoost 1000C and not a 1000 Basic. If so, than there is no connection between the MicroUSB input and the 5v output on the USB-A connector. The output voltage is generated from the battery. The MicroUSB powers the battery charger.

Dave

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Titan001
 
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Re: Pi Won't Boot with Powerboost

Post by Titan001 »

Hi Dave,

I know the powerboost is normally used with a battery, but what I did was simply take the chord coming off of a usb port, sliced it up, and sticked the red and black wires into a terminal block to use as the input rather than a battery. I was told that this would work as it supplies the voltage as described in the instructions for the powerboost.

Was I mistaken in doing that?

Isaac

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dastels
 
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Re: Pi Won't Boot with Powerboost

Post by dastels »

Huh. Yeah, that'll work (the boost convertor has a max input rated at 5.5v).

I'm still confused. What is your goal?

Dave

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