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So yeah, I'm trying to get some more voltage/amperage from the GPIO pins on my Raspberry Pi 2 Model B. I've ran several tests and I'm only getting about 3.2V and 30-40mA. This cannot do much, there must be a way that I can somehow get some more power, probably through an external power source such as a battery. I've heard some things about sending small electrical signals to make something like this work.

The only problem with this is that I've no idea how I can do this, which is why I'm asking this question.

I want to do things such as lighting up a light bulb or something related to that, 3.2V and 30-40mA just isn't gonna cut it. A 9V battery, on the other hand, can easily power something like this.

Thank you for any help, it is much appreciated.

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I had this exact same problem.

I needed ~6v ~1A from the GPIOs so I bought a boost converter, stripped a usb cable, attached + and - to the boost converter and put the output on a transistor, the base of that transistor was hooked up to a GPIO pin on my Pi.

There are better ways than that for turning on and off light bulbs.

Like using relays: http://www.linuxjournal.com/content/home-automation-raspberry-pi

Or Arduino: http://www.instructables.com/id/Uber-Home-Automation-w-Arduino-Pi/

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  • So, there's no way to just find a way to use the electrical signal as a switch to allow the external battery to give power to the lightbulb? It's a small lightbulb by the way, it'll work with 3v easily. It's not a bulb you'd have as a ceiling lamp or anything.
    – Zachary Vincze
    Commented Oct 11, 2015 at 22:54
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    @ZacharyVincze see the link above for relays. Other possible solutions are to use a RF controlled socket, that can be controlled via WiFi, Bluetooth or 433mhz radio, using a transistor/darlington array to switch the 9V supply.
    – Steve Robillard
    Commented Oct 12, 2015 at 0:11

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