MakerFocus Raspberry Pi 4 Battery Pack UPS, V3Plus Expansion Board with 10000mAh Battery, Type-C Interface for RPI 5 4B 3B+ 3B 2B+

UPDATE: Makerfocus contacted me, and after several emails decided the best course of action was to send me a replacement for testing. This battery, with the limited testing I've done (playing youtube videos through Raspian; no hardcore gaming or 1080p videos yet) performs without the random low-power lightning icon I normally receive. I imagine, much like a cell phone, battery life wont be hours and hours on video or gaming, but:a.) So far it works EXACTLY as intended.b.) The company was fast to respond to my comments, and help troubleshoot everything to insure I didn't miss anything. (I've built a few of these but it was still nice to have them cover their bases.)Bottom line:I will be using Makerfocus for all my future RPI projects. Thank you Makerfocus!Technically does what it is supposed to do, however my Pi v3 runs in constant brown-out mode (low voltage icon stays on-screen) so I really can't use it with the Pi without potentially damaging my board. I've heard people mentioning a 'quality micro usb cable' but since nothing online really says what is a battery-friendly' cable versus a generic, I'll never know. This will unfortunately have to collect dust with my other old computer peripherals.

I was really excited about this power module, but it has two flaws, one major, one not as big of a deal but still an oversight. First the big one: It does not have any low voltage protection for the Lithium battery. If you leave your Pi running, it will eventually brown out, however the circuit does not shut down to protect the battery. You can see the LEDs pulsing as it is trying to stay alive, far below a voltage it can operate at. The major problem with this is, it will absolutely kill the Lithium battery if you allow it to do this more than a couple times, as they cannot handle a deep discharge. I measured the cell after it had been left on overnight, and it was at 2.78v. The second problem is when you have it powering your Pi and also plugged in to USB to charge (which it will if you supply it 2.5A source), when you unplug the charging source, it briefly interrupts power to the Pi causing a reset. I feel like this could be easily solved by the circuit designer. If you're just looking for a battery backpack for your Pi to run for several hours, this will totally do the job, but dont plan on leaving it sitting around on battery, as it will eventually kill its' own battery from deep discharge.EDIT: The manufacturer contacted me and let me know they revised the board to fix these two issues, and they sent me a new one. It now doesn't drop out when unplugging or plugging in. Also it does properly shut down the circuit when the li-po gets down to 3.2v.

I used this to run a raspberry pi 4b for a mobile project I was working on and it's a good battery, but it can die fast

After purchasing and installing, definitely ran into multiple gotchas... i.e. the datasheet/repo instructions and even circuit board photos are out of date. Instructions are very hard to understand, most likely lost in translation from Chinese. And most recently ran into their lack of industry standardization of the ext button!? Its self locking not momentary switch, the latter which is typical for PC power swtiches and connections of this type... Instead it needs a self locking button which is typical of 120 volt power devices . Makes no sense and took awhile to figure out what was wrong.Ultimately it works as a separate power supply for multiple RPi devices in my configuration and the UPS feature has worked well so far.PS: their python script is kind of useless based on searches online forums, haven't reviewed the code myself but it's basically for demoing the features of the board ... Not for practical use. Again "kit" is deceiving... Or Maybe I'm expecting too much of a finished product with Raspberry pi add-ons. 🤷‍♂️

Having brought several different so called Rpi UPS's over the years and made my own... this UPS actually works and runs for 4, 4 1/2 hours with a cooling fan heat sink combo after 5-6 charges. Came with a 4000 mah (Actually 3897mah) 3.7 volt lipo battery but intend on modding to trying about 8 to 12 18650 3400mah lit ion's. Did not drop out or reboot testing during power loss. A good deal at 23 bucks. I would have ordered the 10000mah version but over a month delivery I could build my own quicker with this one.

I needed UPS for a pi project I was using as a medical device. Most monitoring devices have a battery so I need one that was reliable.This has been rock solid for over a year and the scripts to help shutdown when battery is too low work great to help keep my SD card from corrupting.Battery life for a pi 4 with no screen attached and constant wifi is around ~4hrs with the 4000 mah battery. If I attached a 7" LCD it custs the time down to less than 1hr. So if you want it to last a long time do not power a screen off the battery or get a larger capacity battery.I made a custom enclosure to house the entire projects and it works great.Will definitely get more when I need them