I bought a UBEC (Universal Battery Elimination Circuit), which, for those not familiar with it, is a "5 volt" dc-dc power conversion circuit (you can get them as high as 5A). It gets it's name from the function of removing the need for an additional battery, and hence weight, in some sort of "drone" like flying machine that needs both 12v and 5v. Searching for UBEC is quick and accurate, with resulting hits cheap and small.
My goal is to power other stuff and a Raspberry Pi with one 12v POE line (no, not 48v. i'm building this myself. So, if i want 12v, i'll inject 12v).
Now we get to the meat of the question.
The UBEC has a 0.10 inch spaced 2-pin female connector on the 5v output end. This is just begging to be connected to the adjacent Gnd-5v male pins on the GPIO.
Now the problem: The nominally 5v UBEC is actually producing 5.3v according to my handy multimeter, and the GPIO pins are supposed to be on the "safe" side of the on-board voltage regulator.
And the question: Does anybody have experience injecting 5.3v (or more) directly into the GPIO pins of a model B/B+? Does it work? Or does it cause the magic $35 smoke to be released from the Pi?
I would simply try this myself, but at the risk of burning an otherwise beautiful $35 Pi, i was wondering if anyone has any prior experience that i could learn from... or will my Pi become the guinea Pi-g?
Yes, i could disconnect the existing connector, micro solder a micro usb connector and go the normal route in. But i'm telling you, at night, i can hear the unprotected GPIO pins begging for that UBEC.