Since the raspberry pi zero takes less power to power up. How many AA batteries do I need to power it up to play a movie in a loop? And how long would this last?
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I'm not enough of a hardware guy to give you a great time estimate, but AA would be drained extremely quickly. They're only 1.5V, so you'd need several of them to boost up to 5V, and they're not exactly powerhouses.– Jacobm001Commented Jan 12, 2016 at 0:01
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what would you recommend as a better power source besides an outlet. i wonder if i can rig cell pone batteries together.– Patoshi パトシCommented Jan 12, 2016 at 0:05
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What's your experience with electrical engineering? Your wording frightens me. Lithium batteries can explode if you don't know what you're doing... You could use a battery bank, something like: amazon.com/10000mAh-Portable-Gerneration-External-Technology/dp/…– Jacobm001Commented Jan 12, 2016 at 0:06
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If I'm correct, the one linked to above should last a little over 3.5 days for an RPi Zero.– Jacobm001Commented Jan 12, 2016 at 0:09
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18650 batteries are larger than AA batteries but WAY better, try looking into that.– Patrick CookCommented Jan 12, 2016 at 8:43
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1 Answer
I suggest not going with AAs but just getting a high mAh phone charger. I have one about the size of the PI that has 10,000 mAh. I used it all night and it didn't seem to go down any (of course it only has 3 bars so I'd guess it was still over 2/3 full). Easily recharged--and 2 or 3 of them will keep you going indefinitely.
I wouldn't suggest running directly off AAs at any rate--the voltages don't match up quite right (6v is a little high for 4xAA and 4.8 is a little low for 4xAA rechargeable).
I have seen USB phone chargers that take 4,6 or maybe 8 AA batteries, that might work but even with 8 I doubt you'd get more than the 10,000mAh rechargeable.
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However if you combine some batteries with a suitable boost (where the combined battery voltage is less than 5Volts) or buck (more than 5V) converter (or a combined buck-boost one that can covert a range of input voltages either side to a specified output voltage that you'll want to set to about 5V) which are available as uncased, assembled modules on well known auction sites you have the output side sorted - you will just want a way to put power into those batteries - if they are rechargeable ones...!– SlySvenCommented Jan 12, 2016 at 4:48
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Never ran it all the way down. I'll hook it up and see. I guess I can look at the syslog to find the last activity after it crashes...– Bill KCommented Jan 13, 2016 at 0:27
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@duckx between 24 and 36 hours(died last night while I was sleeping). That is with a Wi-Fi dongle the entire time and running a minecraft server for a few hours last night(i only mention this because it makes the pi significantly hotter so it's using more power during that time)– Bill KCommented Jan 14, 2016 at 16:46