We'll building this mini mac so it can be self contained. We'll need a battery pack for that! The 6600mAh pack is big but will run the setup for about 15 hours (or less if you add wifi and other accessories)

A PowerBoost 500 brings the LiIon pack voltage up to 5V and even has a spot for an on/off switch

Power Circuit for the Raspberry Pi Model B

The circuit diagram above is a illustration reference for powering the Raspberry Pi. A GPIO cable will conneect to the back of the PiTFT display. Wire #2 will need to be soldered to the postive pin on the Powerboost 500C. Wire #6 connects to the negative pin on the Powerboost 500C. The 600mAh lithium ion battery conncets to the JST port on the Powerboost 500C. A slide switch connects to the GND, EN and BAT pins on the Powerboost 500C.

Speakers

Connect the speakers with the following connections:

connect VDD to VBAT on the powerboost 500
connect GND to VND on the powerboost 500

see photo for audio connections:
connect R+ or L+ to R or L on the raspberry pi (use thin
blue wire)
and connect R- or L- to Gnd on the raspberry pi (ditto)

solder speaker to amp (L out or R out, whichever you
chose in the last step)

set both switches to ON (lowest gain!)

Test Speakers

on on pi, use the following code to test the output of the speakers:

           *|amixer cset numid=3 1

           then:
           |**||
           speaker-test -t sine -f 600
           ||aplay /usr/share/scratch/Media/Sounds/Animal/Bird.wav*
           *aplay /usr/share/sounds/alsa/Front_Center.wav*

This guide was first published on Aug 27, 2014. It was last updated on Mar 08, 2024.

This page (Circuit Diagram) was last updated on Aug 23, 2014.

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