LiFePO4wered/Pi3

Name: LiFePO4wered/Pi3
SKU: 8568
Price: 42.00 USD
Availability: OutOfStock
Rating: 4.65 (29 reviews)

(29 Reviews)

Please read the NOTE in description on how to get the new LiFePO4wered/Pi+ instead!

Designed by Silicognition LLC in United States of America

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2016-12-20T00:30:15.609Z-IMG_20161219_094349.jpg

$42.00

On A Break

Please read the NOTE in description on how to get the new LiFePO4wered/Pi+ instead!

IMPORTANT NOTE: The LiFePO4wered/Pi3 is superseded by the LiFePO4wered/Pi+, which is available here. NOTE: Does not come with a Raspberry Pi, but the battery is included! What is it? The LiFePO4wered…

What is it?

The LiFePO4wered/Pi3™ is a high performance battery power system for the Raspberry Pi. It is a supercharged version of the original LiFePO4wered/Pi specifically made to work as a UPS for the Raspberry Pi 3. It can power a Raspberry Pi for 1 to 9 hours from the battery (depending on Raspberry Pi model, attached peripherals and system load) and can be left plugged in continuously. It features:

A single 3.2 V, 1500 mAh LiFePO4 (lithium iron phosphate) cell, providing high power density, extended cycle life (2000+ cycles), and safety from fire and explosions.
A smart USB charge controller with over-charge protection, allowing the device to stay plugged in and provide UPS (Uninterruptible Power Supply) functionality.
Smart auto-adjusting charge current that allows the charger to draw up to 1.33 A when used with high power chargers, but automatically reduce the current to not overload lower power sources such as a PC USB port.
MPPT functionality that makes it possible to charge the LiFePO4wered/Pi3™ from 5 – 7 V nominal solar cells.
Two-way communication between the power system and the Raspberry Pi over I2C bus (to monitor voltages and customize settings) and Raspberry Pi shutdown detection.
A smart power manager controller and open source daemon that work in tandem to provide over-discharge protection and clean shutdown functionality.
Continuous measurement of USB input voltage, battery voltage and load voltage with smart user programmable thresholds for boot, shutdown and hard power down.
A touch pad with programmable parameters that provides clean boot/shutdown capability even in headless setups.
Press-and-hold touch pad for protection against accidental activation and with the ability to also monitor the touch pad in user software.
A green PWR LED that indicates the Raspberry Pi power state, gives user feedback and can even be controlled by user code.
A separate red CHRG LED that indicates charging state.
A wake timer allowing the Raspberry Pi to be off most of the time for low duty cycle applications.
An auto-boot feature to maximize uptime by making the Raspberry Pi run whenever there is sufficient battery power or when the USB input voltage is present.
An auto shutdown feature that makes it possible to automatically shut down the Raspberry Pi when the USB input voltage has been removed for a programmable amount of time.
Out of the box compatibility with Raspberry Pi Model A+, Model B+, Raspberry Pi 2, Raspberry Pi 3 and Raspberry Pi Zero.
Compatibility with original Raspberry Pi Model A and Model B with additional wiring, or by removing the composite video RCA connector.

Why did you make it?

With the success of the original LiFePO4wered/Pi, many customers wished they could have a similar system that would support UPS functionality for high power boards such as the Raspberry Pi 3. Another often requested feature was to be able to detect the USB input voltage so the system could automatically boot when external power was present and shut down when external power was removed. Both use cases are now possible with the LiFePO4wered/Pi3!

What makes it special?

Because there's nothing else like it. There are some LiPo solutions in the market, but those batteries die after a couple hundred cycles. LiPo cells also can't stand UPS duty, being held at full charge seriously affects their life. Other LiPo solutions don't provide clean shutdown capability, so what's the point? There are power managers that provide on/off functionality with shutdown, but you're on your own when it comes to the battery and to make sure the power doesn't die. If your battery dies, you still can get SD card corruption.

The LiFePO4wered/Pi and LiFePO4wered/Pi3 are really the only solution that I'm aware of that is a complete battery / UPS / power manager system!

NOTE: There is a case available on Tindie that fits the Raspberry Pi plus a LiFePO4wered/Pi3:

Case for Raspberry Pi Model B+, Pi 2 and Pi 3 plus LiFePO4wered/Pi3

Disclaimer

When purchasing this product you agree to release Silicognition LLC and all its employees from all liability relating to injuries that may occur (during activity, usage, etc.). You also agree to hold Silicognition LLC and its employees entirely free from any liability, including financial responsibility for injuries incurred, regardless of the circumstances. Although one of the safest types of lithium batteries, LiFePO4 have high power density so think about what you are doing and don't do stupid stuff!

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Quantity	Price
1	$42.00
2-4	$40.00
5-9	$37.00
10-19	$35.00
20-49	$33.00
50-99	$31.00
100+	$30.00

Review Breakdown

Average Ratings

Product: (4.83)

Documentation: (4.41)

Shipping: (4.69)

Communication: (4.66)

Nathaniel | June 18, 2024

Awesome device

I failed to review this sooner due to not creating an actual account. The device works wonderfully as a Raspberry Pi UPS, and has done so through many brown/blackouts.

Radim | Nov. 27, 2018

It works!

Perfect product
Perfect design
Perfect quality
Perfect API
PERFECT!

It works on my RPi for about a year now without any problems and it saved my dataloging three times during power outages.

Scott | May 6, 2018

Does everything I wanted and more.

I'm using this to make a pi media server for the car and when travelling. It does a lovely job and allows me to have a completely portable setup with no in car modifications required.

Gary | May 3, 2018

Suitable only for limited applications

Pro:
Functions well as a true UPS.
Documentation is good.
Customer service is good.

Con:
The optional Stackable 40-pin Header uses non-compliant pins (not 0.025" sq), which cannot be trusted to connect reliably with normal mating connectors.
The specified current capacity of 0.85 amps seems too low for the price of the product.

Patrick | April 10, 2018

Perfect!

Works together with Razberry, I‘ happy with the ups! Documentation is easy for unterstanding and also suitable for beginners

Angel Carlos | Feb. 28, 2018

Highly recommended product

It works great, although I'm a rookie, the installation was successful.
UPS properly and allows me to shut down without damaging files.
What more can you ask for? Now I can do projects that keep the system up in spite of power outages.
Thank you very much

Konstantinos | Feb. 13, 2018

Good product bad support

Very satisfied with the product which works as described. However, upon reconnecting the Sense HAT it burnt it. I contacted support to ask whether this is a known behaviour. Never received a response.

Response from Silicognition LLC | Feb. 13, 2018

Hello Konstantinos,
I pride myself in providing excellent support, as most customers can confirm. In your case, I replied to your email from Jan 31 on the same day. Please check your spam folder. Most customers will also try the Tindie forums before leaving a negative review. I respond promptly to both.

David | Dec. 22, 2017

Works as advertised

Excellent product, no surprise, no effort. Almost plug and play.
I got 2h20 of autonomy on a headless Pi3 doing light duty network tasks.
As of feature suggestion, I believe it should not be that difficult to build-in a RTC clock for when the Pi is powered off.
Also, the capacitive button with the LED is cool, but I prefer a standard click button, I'm a bit old school.

Cash | Dec. 18, 2017

The LifePO4wered/Pi3 works perfectly, excellent product!

I have to say that this is an extremely mature and well designed unit. I have needed it for development testing and it works exactly as advertised and in fact has handled a bit of abuse without much complaining. The designed did a great job of putting out a "pro-consumer" class piece of hardware and I look forward to his next iterations of the device. It is a great idea, well executed and a great example of small business executing better than the big guys.

Highly recommended for you Pi or similar SBC's.

Alan | Aug. 16, 2017

The best PI UPS for me, so far...

My main interest in having a Raspberry Pi UPS was for my seventeen year old robot, Pogo, but first the LiFeP04wered/Pi3 is under test to protect my robot development Pi from much-too-regular power utility outages.

While I am away from my desk, I leave my robot development Raspberry Pi 3 running the distributed computing platform BOINC with Einstein@Home and SETI@Home tasks crunching.

This crunching draws about 0.7A at 5.4v at the wall-wart before installing the LiFePO4wered/Pi3 UPS. Since this is below the 0.85A load limit of the LiFePO4wered/Pi3 UPS, there is no electrical problem to support this.

I purchased the LiFePO4wered/Pi3 UPS with the cool transparent blue case, and added some "Self adhesive Clear Door Knob Bumpers. 0.5 inch thick - 0.9 inch diameter" feet to give better air flow, and an Adafruit 15x15x15mm heatsink over the CPU, and a small sink over the LAN chip.

With BOINC preferences set for three cores, 66% of processor time, 80% of memory, vcgencmd reports temps between 72-78 degC, and no throttling.

Under normal operation, this Pi UPS is doing a great job. I did recommend the addition of a "long press to force off" feature for the unusual case where the Pi aborted unexpectedly leaving not way to cycle the power.

Ned | July 17, 2017

Excellent piece of hardware; installs and works flawlessly

After several mishaps where a Raspberry Pi containing important data ended up with a corrupted filesystem, I decided to add this combination UPS/shutdown-startup-control module. Installation was trivial and so was setup - download the software, build, install, done.

The documentation is a little on the terse side but everything you really need is there. (Tip: If a CLI command returns -1 you've probably forgotten to run it as root/with sudo.) I needed to set exactly one parameter (auto_boot) to something other than the default.

Paul | July 6, 2017

A nicely designed, easy to use backup power supply

This is well engineered backup power supply for the Raspberry Pi 3. Reading through the documentation I could see a lot of thought has gone into the design from battery selection through to the command-line tools to control the device. I'd tried a similar product before this one, but found that one had poor documentation and was hard to get going. The LiFePO4wered/Pi3 is really excellent.

Chase | June 2, 2017

Great product

I needed a product like this for a Raspberry Pi arcade cabinet. I wanted to be able to flip a switch and turn off the monitor, speakers, etc. without hard-powering the Pi down and potentially damaging the file system. It's super easy to set up and you can get it working in about 10 minutes.

Jean-Jacques | May 26, 2017

An effective power button and UPS

Provides the two essential functions that are lacking in Raspberry Pi :
- Power button, a hardware to shutdown the Pi.
- UPS with safe shutdown when power is missing for too long time.
Very easy to install, very easy to setup.
I strongly suggest to buy a suitable case.

Nicolas | May 25, 2017

Very good :)

The device works great, doing exactly what is expected. Only a little stability problem: the battery is physically not holded enough. Might be improved in coming versions.

June | May 22, 2017

Base behavior a little weird, mechanical support not great

Without the drivers installed, the base behavior of the addon board is a little weird -- literally no way to turn off the pi without the drivers installed. Additionally, the mechanical support of the addon board is very poor. It feels like the control board might easily break, and there's limited support for the battery enclosure to be anchored to the pi. Overall, though, it gets the job done, given you provide some form of additional mechanical support for the addon around the pi it's attached to (ie: the LiFePO4 Pi case).

Alan | April 21, 2017

This new version for the Pi3 works perfectly!

I am using LiFePOwered Pi3 to provide uninterrupted power for a boat navigation system. Install of hardware and software was a snap, and the battery life is as advertised.

Great product!!

Thomas | April 12, 2017

Perfect Raspberry Pi 3 UPS

Best Raspberry Pi 3 UPS I could find around the net. Most commercial Pi3 UPS systems use LiPo batteries which are not as safe as LiFePO4 batteries. Easy installation and good communication with the maker! Also reasonable shipping prices to Germany.

Raman | March 28, 2017

My application required special work...

The support however was amazing and helped me get there. I purchased to run this on LibreElec, that requires some tweaking so beware but it work well now. I'll be sharing my notes with the seller shortly and hopefully he can update his docs to help others.

Daniel | March 20, 2017

An excellent power supply for an Rpi3

I have been able to power my Rpi3 with a 7" touchscreen display and an Arduino Mega. Everything has been working very well. The unit's designer has been excellent to work with to handle questions I have had. I would definitely recommend to anyone needing rechargeable UPS for their Pi.

Nicolas | March 15, 2017

Excellent

Parfait pour tous les projets mobiles ( ou pas). Fini les corruptions de cartes Sd. Bravo et Merci.

Tim | March 9, 2017

Great product

I bought the LiFePO4wered/Pi3 to use with a dash cam project for my car. I also bought the case available. Everything installed fine, but I found myself wishing for a little more concrete directions for how to install it right out of the box, and what to expect. Other than that it has worked very well. I took the small fan from my previous Pi case and installed it in the new case, running off the GPIO extender from the UPS with no problem. Very pleased.

D H | Feb. 28, 2017

generally pleased. will be buying another one

The physical mount would benefit from going all the way to the other end and hard mount to the hole on the rPi. At present it really hangs (and it does, heavy battery) off the top 8 GPIO pins and one mounting hole.

Don't let that stop you though, i merely glued a couple of stand offs to the battery casing.

Installation is quite easy, most n00bz shouldn't have any worries.

CREATE a .SH to do your configuration and put it on the OS SD card. Call it at boot time from /etc/rc.local. Its easy to do and if you balls up the config you can edit the file elsewhere, boot and reconfigure the board.

I did send them a request for defaults after i ballsed up one of the config settings (fixed as per above) but then i realised all the defaults are in the documentation. Still, i never received a response from the support email which was disappointing but ultimately...neh.

Response from Silicognition LLC | Feb. 28, 2017

Hi Hamish,

I'm sorry to hear you didn't get my response. I did answer your email on Feb 23, unfortunately Gmail has the nasty habit of throwing my emails in the spam folder. Not much I can do about it...

I'd also like to point out that the settings can be saved in flash so you don't really need to run a script at every boot.

Thanks for the review!
Patrick

Richard | Feb. 27, 2017

A great solution for a RPI UPS

It works well and does what they said. It does tie up I2C bus, which is a hassle if you want to use that. A header for the power connector would be nice for a remote switch.

Konrad | Feb. 23, 2017

Essential Raspberry Pi Add-on, great customer support!

Looking for a compact and portable battery pack/power supply for my Raspi Pi's (3, Zero), i found this little gem.

On top of its compact size and focus on more safety (intrinsically safe material), it combines the UPS with a charger unit AND an on/off-button for safe shutdown. This three very useful functions combined in one compact, well thought unit makes the LiFePO4wered-Pi kind of unique.
I could not find anything like it on usual webshops for raspi-stuff.

I ordered the LiFePO4wered-Pi3 device for powering a Pi Zero, getting the well developed software (avail. on github) installed worked like a charm.
Shipping (foreign country) was done really fast and without any problems. The unit arrived packed safely.
Contact to the seller was perfect, even weeks after the buy.

Mike | Feb. 17, 2017

Outstanding in every category.

This may be the best seller/product combo that I have dealt with for a very long time.
I don't think the seller could have performed better, I really don't.
Outstanding communication.
Shipped extremely quickly.
Extremely good documentation.
Hardware worked as described in every test I have done so far.
Software install was very easy, and each step worked as described.
I pride myself on be very critical of products and communication, and I will point out any good or bad points, so a better job is done next time.

Brendon | Jan. 27, 2017

The RPi product I've always wanted

I was pretty excited to find this product on tindie since I've long been looking around for UPS options for a mobile RPi. This goes beyond my expectations with the software agent that supports clean shutdown.

It feels like a professional and complete product. I've been using it for a couple of weeks now and so far no issues at all. Very happy and I've recommended it to colleagues.

My only suggestion is for the maker to offer companion cases - I would definitely have added some to my order. There is another maker on Tindie offering cases to house a Pi + LiFePO4wered but he doesn't ship to my country. For now I've hacksawed an existing case :)

Alastair | Jan. 19, 2017

Great UPS solution

Using it as a UPS on my Pi3 and it was a breeze to set up and it offers great backup for a system that should have resilience against flakey power

Alan | Jan. 10, 2017

An On/Off switch and No more corrupted filesystems...

I have this hooked up to a Pi2 being used as my backup Flightaware ADSB receiver while evaluating it. As it works GREAT, I will shortly be getting another one to use on my main Pi2 receiver that is mounted outside the house. I really dislike it when I'm working on the house and turn off circuit breakers and accidentally suddenly power off my Pis, potentially corrupting their filesystems and creating more work - especially for the one I need a ladder to reach.

The LiFePO4wered/Pi3 works great. I did have to adjust some of the thresholds, as when running the ADSB software pulls enough power that out of the box it would go into "shutdown/reboot" cycles when I turned on autoboot and tested removing the power. So I just raised the "auto boot" threshold since I'm willing to wait a bit for more battery recharge after the power comes back on. With the Pi outside on a ladder, I'm more interested in reliability and predictability (not having to get out the ladder) than I am about availability (exactly how many minutes/year it is up). Especially since if I really lose power at the house, the switch and router will also lose power, so there isn't much point in the server(s) running.

Was easy to install the driver following the instructions, but it did take some work to figure out good thresholds for the auto-boot that would ensure the battery was recharged enough to avoid re-shutdown when the PI was drawing power, but not so high that it would never auto-boot. But a few practise runs with pulling the power and watching Vbat and we got there...

I'm rating "communication" as a 5, though I din't really have any communication.. but I din't need any so that's great, right?

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$42.00