hi,
new to community, and to raspberry pi in general, so apologies for what might be simple question -
I’ve been running a pisound on a Pi3 using an Rpi Powerpack and all is good but a bit bulky for what i want to finally achieve, so i’d like to try with a pi zero and an adafruit powerboost (https://www.adafruit.com/product/2465 )
but i’m a little bit stuck knowing how i would go about connecting pins though, if i connect the powerboost to the GPIO first then i think it can share ground pins with the pisound, is that correct? but what about power pins, is there something i shouldn’t double connect?
thanks in advance for any newbie advice!
You should connect the 5V pin to RPi’s pins 2 and 4 and ground to the ground pins. All of the RPi’s Ground pins share the same ground net, so you don’t really have to make a connection to all of the GND pins, having multiple power pins are usually good for high current applications.
ah ok thanks for info!..
so i connect the 5v out of the Powerboost to both the RPi pins and then just connect all of the Pisound pins as well, so they are also connected to one of the same RPi power pins?
All Pisound’s pins should make contact with the 40 pin header on Pi Zero.
Btw, you could just connect a short usb cable from the PowerBoost to RPi micro usb port That also has some additional power protection circuitry, compared to powering directly the 5V pins. Or would that take too much space?
ok so just to get this straight … there will then be pins from the PiSound AND connections from the powerbooster connected to the same power GPIOs on the RPi? (sorry i’m very new to this and where power connections are concerned want to be sure !)
the reason i don’t want to use the cable is for durabilty, i’d like to take loose connections/breaking cables out of the mix as well as saving space
Yes, it’s fine to share the power pins, as long as there’s a single power source supplying the power. In this case it’s the power booster. If there’s multiple power sources, you’d have to use diodes to connect them together, but that also causes the voltage to drop by around 0.6V (depending on the diode type).
So if you don’t connect anything to Raspberry Pi’s micro USB port while the power booster is attached, it should be fine.
That also has some additional power protection circuitry, compared to powering directly the 5V pins. Or would that take too much space?