PowerBoost 500 Basic

A 5V 500mA power supply from LiPo for mobile project

The Power Boost is a perfect power supply for your portable projects! It is a small DC/DC converter module in BOOST mode. This means that it is able to operate from a 1.8V battery (or more) to convert the voltage and produces an output voltage of 5.2V (thus intended to power projects USB type).                                                                                                                                                                                                              As with our popular 5V A1 USB power supply, the conversion circuit is set to 5.2 Volts (allowed by the USB standard) to compensate for the induced voltage drop in the USB cable that powers your project.                                                                                                                                   This little extra will allow you to use longer cables and consider larger current or even consider the use of a protection diode.
The 5.2V voltage can be used safely to power your electronic projects such as Arduino, Raspberry Pi, Beagle Bone while avoiding unexpected resets when calling for larger current (current causing a larger voltage drop across the USB cable because of the resistance of the USB cable).

The Power Boost 500 is articulated around a Texas instrument TPS61090 boost converter. This component has really nice features like the detection of too low voltage on the battery, an internal chopper of 2A, a synchronous conversion, an excellent efficiency and an operating frequency of 700KHz. See the TPS61090 data sheet !

• Synchronous operation means that you can completely disconnect the output by connecting the Enable pin (active) to ground/GND. This completely disconnects the output.
• The internal chopper of 2A (tip limited to ~2.5A) means you can get 500mA+ from a battery having a voltage as low as 1.8V, 750mA+ from two NiMH or Alkaline batteries and at least 1000mA from a Lipo/Lilon battery 3.7V or 3 NiMH/Alkaline batteries.
• A "Low battery" indicator lights up in red (it is an LED) when the voltage drops below 3.2V, optimized for most LiPo/Lilon batteries.
• Has data resistance for 500mA 'Apple/iOS' charge rate. Weld the included USB connector and you can plug any iPad, iPhone or iPod for a charge at 500mA. Not recommended for iPads that really need a 1A charge rate.
• Complete breakout for the pins: battery input, control pins and power output.
• Efficiency of more than 90% in most cases (see the performance graphs in the data sheet), low current at rest: 5mA when the module is activated (Enabled) and the LED is on, 20µA when the module is off (output and low battery LED off)

Excellent module to power your robot, Arduino project, nano computer such as Raspberry Pi or Beagle Bone! For each order, you receive a fully assembled and tested card and a USB A connector (included but not welded).
If you power your project via USB, Weld the USB USB A connector (this should take 3 minutes). If you want to use a screw terminal block, you can buy a terminal block 2 pin 3.5mm here and weld the pins to the location provided for the USB connector. If you need a very compact assembly, you can weld the wires directly instead of the USB connector.