Raspberry-Pi direct 5V power wiring modification 5

 in Computers  tagged direct / modification / power / raspberry-pi / solder / soldered by

Raspberry Pi direct power wiring modificationTo feed power directly to the Raspberry-Pi board without using the micro-USB connector, I soldered 2 wires directly to the back of the circuit board. The connection leaves the fuse and reverse-polarity protection diode in circuit.

A couple of small holes drilled into the side of the case to form a slot brings the power wires out. Heatshrink over the wires protects them and tidies it all up.

Now to test it.
Raspberry Pi direct power wiring modification

Leave a comment

5 thoughts on “Raspberry-Pi direct 5V power wiring modification”

  • PMB Post author

    From memory, the board shown in the image is a rev-1 (smaller RAM).

    This connection leaves the protection in circuit. But the R-Pi still resets when a heavy draw device like a HDD is plugged into the USB. I wouldn’t use the GPIO pins to feed the R-Pi. I don’t know what the tracks to the GPIO pins are like and wouldn’t want to damage the damage the board with an overload on the USB.

    I prefer soldering the power feed to the USB socket and adding the extra capacitor. This seems to be the most reliable.

  • tom

    HI,

    So this leaves the protection intact? I’ve read elsewhere about people soldering to the gpio pins or tp1 and 2, but they bypass the fuse.

    Is this a rev 2 board? I’m guessing this is the same regardless of the revision, 1 or 2?

    Tom

  • PMB Post author

    The cable I used has thick plastic but not very big copper. It sounds like your power supply cannot deliver the current needed and maintain 5V. Some plug-pack supplies and phone chargers won’t deliver their rated current. I am using a 2 Amp power supply from a portable hard-drive interface.

    One of the early phone chargers I tried was rated at 5V 1.5 Amps. It failed at about 0.5 Amps with a bang and puff of smoke. I also tried a 5V 1 Amp Motorola phone charger. It powered the R-Pi, keyboard and mouse OK, but would not cope with a small hard-drive, causing resets.

  • Todd

    It’s underpowering the Pi. I can’t make the wifi dongle and some other resources fire up. Not even a USB keyboard on a powered USB hub. In some cases it keeps restarting. The current is dropped there, I gather. I noticed that your wires appear thicker than the ones from my hacked USB cables. What is your 5v source? If I can create a larger power bus with larger gauge wire and power the Pi, I’ll owe you a beer.’.