Pipower IO pin and battery capacity

Accessories for Raspberry Pi and Arduino
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Hello,

I’m looking at the documentation to see if the pipower will work for what I need. I have a couple questions that may help me understand.

This application is a Raspberry 3 with peripherals mostly used in remote sites where I will not have access to external power. I need to use the device for 30-60 minutes at a time after which, I can usually recharge it before using again. I saw the pipower and that looked of interest. I have two main questions:

  • Because I will be outdoors, I will likely have everything encased. I saw here that there is an “EN” IO pin. Does this mean that if an external switch is off, the Pi will not pull power from the batteries? (and if on it will)? How should this be wired? What voltage would be going through that switch? I would like to put an switch on the outside of the casing that can turn off/on battery power. (is this possible?)
  • Is there a way to expand battery capacity? I think it is two 18650 batteries in series? If I were to (for example) get four and put two sets of batteries in parallel than put the two sets in series, would I be able to essentially double the capacity (using a PH2.0, 5P connector in the same way as the original).
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  1. If you turn the pipower’s on-board switch off, the Raspberry Pi is not getting battery power.
    The EN pin can be connected to an external switch. When this pin is grounded, the PiPower is turned off. External switches cannot be used with self-resetting buttons or keys, etc. The EN pin is only available when the on-board switch is turned on.
  2. You can select a high-capacity battery.
    However, you cannot use four single-cell batteries in series, but at most two single-cell batteries in series.
    Because a single 18650 3.7V lithium batteries, fully charged for not more than 4.2V, two batteries is 8.4V, our specifications is the total voltage of the battery can not exceed 8.4V, if you use four batteries in series, the total voltage is 16.6 or so.
    Our premise is two 18650 3.7V lithium batteries, the maximum total voltage of 8.4V, battery capacity (mAh) can choose a larger, but the total voltage of the two batteries must be fixed not to exceed 8.4V.
    At present, the battery capacity of the battery pack we deliver is 2200mAh, you can choose a larger capacity battery. For example 5000mAh.
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That is very helpful, thank you

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