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I am currently building a drone that I want to be a bit advanced so I am building code on both arduino and raspberry. What I have not figured out yet though is how i can power them both and preferably with one lipo battery to make it weigh as little as possible. And as It is a drone of course i have to be able to power it wirelessly.

Right now I successfully power my arduino pro mini 5v with a lipo 3s battery and a power distribution board as you can see in my image below. I also successfully put motor wires on my pwm pins for each motor so I can control them with my arduino code and it works great.

Now I am not sure what to do with my raspberry pi zero w board (i drew a red rectangle around it). Is there anyway it can share power with the 3s lipo or do I need something externally to power it and if so what should I look for? I have a store pretty close to me where I order from (electrokit) that has a broad range of items. I also look to connect them together so i can talk between the arduino and pi.

enter image description here

This is the power distribution board I use: https://hobbyking.com/en_us/hobby-king-quadcopter-power-distribution-board.html?___store=en_us

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    What is your question? I have a 3.3V Pro Mini, which is easy to power from Pi 3.3V, and easy to interface. You have a choice of SPI, I²C, Serial or direct GPIO communication. You can power the Pi through the 5V pin on the expansion connector.
    – Milliways
    Jun 5, 2017 at 23:10
  • I need to power both the arduino and raspberry wirelessly. i am creating a drone so i have connected a lipo battery to my raw input on the arduino pro mini 5v. can that lipo also power the raspberry pi zero w and if so what connections do I need to make or do I need to power the raspberry pi zero w with something else?
    – Carlos Rodrigez
    Jun 5, 2017 at 23:12
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    This is rather off topic for the Pi, but WHY burn half your power as heat in the Arduino linear regulator? Use a UBEC like everyone else does for models.
    – Milliways
    Jun 5, 2017 at 23:51
  • power distribution board is a very good solution when i work with 4 motors. so each esc of the motor goes to a pwm pin and i can control all of the 4 different motors nicely with arduino code
    – Carlos Rodrigez
    Jun 5, 2017 at 23:59

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Use a UBEC like everyone else does for models to power BOTH the Pi and Arduino.

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  • Alright! I will google to research a bit more because i have not heard of it before. I have a power distribution board that I might not use then? I am a bit confused over how a schematic would look like. This is what it looksl ike currently: i.stack.imgur.com/tpb43.png where the 3s lipo battery goes to the power distribution board
    – Carlos Rodrigez
    Jun 13, 2017 at 13:13
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    DO NOT paste detail into Comments, and DO NO post links; include image in your question. You seem to be fixated on this power distribution board which seems to just be a complicated way of splitting wires into 4. The LAST thing I would put in a model is anything which adds weight and bulk but no functionality, but this is off topic for the Pi site; try a modelling site.
    – Milliways
    Jun 13, 2017 at 23:55

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