This article is part of a series.

View all 5 parts
  1. Part 1 – Arduino to RPi -- Galvanically Isolated I2C
  2. Part 2 – Blueberry Pi -- How I Setup My Raspberry Pi as a Robot Base
  3. Part 3 – This Article
  4. Part 4 – OpenCV on a Raspberry Pi
  5. Part 5 – Setup Headless WiFi on Re4son's Kali Pi

Originally posted on www.letsmakerobots.com

As I prepare to start adding peripherals to my Pi Bot, I wanted to be sure to get around the 700ma power budget the Pi has. After searching for a cheap battery powered USB hub and finding little, I decided to hack up a few cheap(ish) parts and make my own.

  1. USB Hub : $1.39

  2. 5000mAh Battery : $17.93

  3. DC-DC Converter : $2.76

Total: $22.08

The Battery Hack:

1. Crack it open.

2. Find POWER and GND.

3. Wire it up.

4. Make a small hole for wires and bring wires out.

5. Solder the respective leads to the DC-DC converter.

6. Smile, then sit through my way too long of a video to make it into the HUB.

Hope all are well. :)

NOTE: Regarding the error at the end of the video. Don't panic (that's what I did). I actually found out this had nothing to do with my hub, it had to do with plugging an iPhone into a Raspberry Pi.

NOTE2: I realize I used the wrong "hearty," my brain has problems typing homonyms and parahomonyms. :P