#250 Universal Power Source (UPS) for only 2$. Is this possible? (Raspberry Pi, Arduino, ESP32)

Uninterruptable power sources or UPS for your Raspberry Pi, Arduino, or ESP microcontroller usually are quite expensive and also do not always work. When I found these small 2 dollar modules, I asked myself: Can we use them as a UPS? Or are they just junk and false promises? Time for a closer look!
From time to time viewers ask how they should power their projects, especially with batteries. Today we will take a look at this small module and find out if it is any good, how it compares with Power Banks, and where it fits in the “energy supply chain.”

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[vylbird]

I think you got the abbreviation wrong. It's Uninterruptable Power Supply.

[kjur]

I took a different approach on this topic, I made a small low power module that can charge a battery and power a device separately. for this I used a P channel mosfet (between boost and battery) and extra shottky diode. My module contains TP4057, smaller sot23-6 version of TP4056, some protection designed to cut off at about 3V, boost converter is MT3608 set for whatever voltage you need. When I connect usb lead, charger charges battery, mosfets disconnects boost from battery, and current flows from usb lead to boost part through a diode. As I made this to power up a DSO Shell, it's small, with everything on one side, but I think that mosfet swiching thing can be easily scaled up for higher current demands.

[speedfatty]

Man this is twice now ive been looking at a product on ali and you are doing a video on it. i love you for this man, cant wait to see the results of this video.

[MagivaIT]

this is great, i really hope you do a follow up video
1) build the auto-disconnect protection
2) daisy chain these together in parrellel
3) build a circuit to use existing powerbanks and treat them as UPS
love your channel

[therandomman]

Andreas, you have a large enough viewer base. Why not design a product like this but with the modifications you just mentioned, and then open source the design or contact a chinese manufacturer to create it cheaply?

[wilman_studio]

Great video. The correct way to deal with the issue of charging the battery whilst connected to a load is to run the Vin through a schottky diode to the boost converter bypassing the LiPo charger. The LiPo cell is then connected with P-channel mosfet to the boost converter with the gate of the mosfet also connected to Vin. This will allow the battery to be charge independently of the load but will also switch the battery into play as soon as there is no input power. It's not good practice to sap the load power off the battery charger as you highlighted.

[reanimationxp]

Excellent video as usual Andreas. It always surprises me how you address challenges I've forgotten I already faced, and are able to cover them in far greater detail than I did at the time. Thank you for sharing! I look forward to hearing about your solution for the raspberry pi's extended drain, if you find one :)

[thesimbon]

At least you have confirmed my findings about the unit shutting down at around 2A on 5V. Thanks

[gtrangoni]

Thanks a lot. I've buyed following your links one shield and two batteries. I've received them now and it's time to test.
I'm a fan of your videos and admire your sense of humor. Your knowledge has been of great help for to me and my final career project about BLE beacons for monitoring pacients in healthcare centers.
Best regards from the north of Argentina!

[NabilTouchie]

Thanks for saving me time money and frustration, I needed 3A 5V and got excited to see this module in a online store but suspicious of the aspects, so your video was really helpful

[donpalmera]

I've never seen a Chinese product like this that works all that well and I have a little pile of puffed up lipo cells to show for it. I don't think it's easy to make something that works well with the cheap discrete components making up the path. Richtek has some cheap (~50cents from taobao) parts that can do almost everything and have "power path switching" that switches the load directly to the input so it doesn't fight with the charger. Those would work well for a board like this. Aside from that there are PMIC chips that have the charger, power path and programmable DC-DC supplies for not much more that would probably would well if integrated into module with an ESP32. You'd be able to put sensors etc on their own DC-DC converters and turn them off when not needed, see the state of the battery etc.

[Nicksperiments]

If I had a dollar for every time I successfully bent the pin of an SMD chip, I’d have 0 dollars

[stefangroenendijk]

It's really nice to see that in the transaction history of the UPS on aliexpress the first 17 pages (of 30 total) are from today... they will have to do a lot of packaging there!

[thekakan]

"Atleast for a particular time or when the sun doesn't shine"
Rhymes pretty good :)

[mwint]

"The sun does not always shine." That's deep man

[HIBAW]

Thanks for the video. I also tested two of them. Bad solder joints on both. One dead after a month, and one DOA. I had to repair both, a chip lead, a fused resister, and a usb pin. Ordered months apart. In the real world an rpi cannot run off one. The battery voltage will drop over time. There just isn't enough headroom with 600mah. At least that was my experience on the two I tested. After 4 days, a fully charged lipo which started at 4.2v, was at 3.87v and dropping. So it's not reliable for an rpi without changes. And recovery isn't an option after an outage like you mentioned. For esp's though, it's potentially fine. I considered making one with two usb inputs, and switching. This would leave enough overhead to manage the charging vs discharging separately. That's the design I think I'd like to see. A real ups should switch power sources, not unreliably limit the whole thing.

[MartinBgelund]

Thanks for testing this module's UPS capabilities! I bought 4 of these after I saw them recommended on Ralph S. Bacon's YouTube channel, for using them as UPS' on my robot.

[GRBtutorials]

6:50 Cut the PCB trace instead. It's easier and you don't risk breaking the chip.

[deangreenhough]

Happy Sunday Mornings😁 another most excellent and worthy subject. As always I didn’t realise the depth of knowledge required to understand this, but I have received another excellent tutorial and a new understanding. I see this video has sparked some real interest in the comments. Hopefully Andreas you can probe into this subject with another video as it’s rather interesting.

Happy NY to all the 100k+ subscribers 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿

[NoHandleToSpeakOf]

This is the module I used for my solar backpack. Bypassed charging circuit by soldering SX01-3A solar controller output to the battery holder. Worked great this summer but now it is winter and the boost converter that is always on drains battery.