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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?

Patoshi パトシ
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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. – Jacobm001 Jan 12 '16 at 00:01
  • 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 Jan 12 '16 at 00:05
  • 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: http://www.amazon.com/10000mAh-Portable-Gerneration-External-Technology/dp/B009USAJCC/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1452557191&sr=8-3&keywords=battery+bank – Jacobm001 Jan 12 '16 at 00:06
  • If I'm correct, the one linked to above should last a little over 3.5 days for an RPi Zero. – Jacobm001 Jan 12 '16 at 00:09
  • 18650 batteries are larger than AA batteries but WAY better, try looking into that. – Patrick Cook Jan 12 '16 at 08:43
  • also related: http://raspberrypi.stackexchange.com/questions/40377/can-i-use-a-dc-dc-step-up-module-to-power-a-raspberry-pi-from-2aa-batteries/40386#40386 – Ghanima Jan 12 '16 at 08:44
  • I promise you are wrong if you believe you will get 3.5 days out of a 10000 mA battery. Chop that down by a factor of 5-10. – goldilocks Jan 12 '16 at 11:09

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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.

Bill K
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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...! – SlySven Jan 12 '16 at 04:48
  • how long did it last? – Patoshi パトシ Jan 13 '16 at 00:24
  • 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 K Jan 13 '16 at 00:27
  • @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 K Jan 14 '16 at 16:46