Has anyone used either the Raspberry PI 4 or the Mele quieter 2q with battery/powerbanks?

I am catching a plane tomorrow to go somewhere remote and I am still debating whether to bring:

- 2x 20000mah (@3.7v) lithium batteries.
-1x 20000mah + 1x50000mah batteries (the latter is slightly heavier/higher than what is officially allowed by regulations without asking for special permissions, but I am not sure if they check that in airports and I can just play ignorant).

- RPI 4 computer (running ekos/indi/phd2): I measured about 3w @5v power usage
- MeLe quieter 2q (running ekos/indi/phd2): I am measuring now about 1.2-2w @12v power usage, which seems to me crazily incredible ! I am testing this setup with a battery right now.

OTA will be a redcat51, mount an AZ GTI and 120mm guidescope with the zwo 120 mini guide camera.

I have tested more that setup with RPI 4 computer, but I am not sure whether to risk it and go with the MeLe to reduce wattage.

Opinions?

More testing. 2.5W approx, or about 1Wh in 22 minutes. With the az gti connected (tracking) directly to one of the usbs of the mele, and the other 3 used for the Canon 6d data cable, the zwo asi120mm looping in phd2 and the eqdir cable. I am just amazed, I thought the raspberry pi was super optimized power-wise, but this MeLe is just amazing.

I am doing some maths and I think I can even go with just the 2 smaller power banks. One for the canon (about 1-1.5 W in standby, 2.5-3 W with the shutter opened and taking picture) and another one for the MeLe+mount.

Can't help you with the airport situation but thank you for the tip on the Mele quieter mini pc!

When I travel with my AZ-GTi and DSLR (no airports), I only use two or sometimes four batteries.
TalentCell 12V 3000mAh to power AZ-GTi (lasts for a few nights).
TalentCell 12V 6000mAh to power DSLR (lasts for a few nights). If I use this battery to power RPI4 as well then it lasts for just one night.
I use another 12V 3000mAh for a dew heater if needed (one night).
I use another 12V 3000mAh for a monitor if needed (1-2 nights).

Hi there,

I am a bit curious about how you are powering the Quieter 2Q. Powerbank with PD and a special cable cable that negotiates 12V as the output voltage? Or can you yourself pick the output voltage from on the specific powerbank of yours?
I am asking this because the 2Q does not have any PD circuitry and Mele specificaly warns against using any regular old USB powerbank to power it as that likely will kill the 2Q.

I use an usb adaptor to DC female jack connector that has a voltage selector. It needs to be connected to a QC port, otherwise the voltage is fixed to 5V. Also works with usb-c woth PD that has a negotiator to set the 12v.

Then a male usb jack to usb-c which I connect to the MeLe. Both cables (the QC usb-A and the usb-c with PD/negotiator) works fine.

Okay, that's cool! I have a Quieter 3Q myself, and I am in the process of making myself a cable, DC plug on one end and a USB-C on the other end to power my PC from my power distribution box, that gives 13.7V, no PD, no voltage selecotrs or anything like that. It is proving quite difficult so I am looking for other ways to solve it.

Anyway, did not mean try and divert from the topic of your thread. Thank you for the info.

From looking at them, some powerbanks, like the TalentCell Max mentions, have dedicated 12V outputs using 5.5-2.1mm round connectors so, no PD issues from that type of connection. I don't know if the OP's powerbanks have that type of connection but from the picture she posted it doesn't seem like so.

I'm running on a Quiter 3Q (not the 3C) and, as you wrote, Mele clearly mention not to use powerbanks with it. I made a 5.5-2.1mm connector to USB-C to run the quieter 3Q, and I am running my system (Quieter 3Q, mount, cameras, focuser,...) from a 12V 100Ah LiFePo4 battery. Not for airplane travel though! An interesting point with the Quieter 3Q is that people running it under Windows say that it sometimes gets too hot to touch but on Linux, it barely gets warm.

OTH

Gilles

I have one of these for power distribution and control at the moment. I want to move away from the RPi and astroberry as I am having so much issues with it, and I therefore want to power the 3Q from the box and and have the box as a dew heater controler. and leave the rest for the 3Q.
I have intended to make a cable like the one you described. I aqcuired this cable and will solder aDC plug to the open ends. The cable is said to be used to power a Raspberry Pi 4., which would be 5V and 3A max. But I will be running up 2A at about 13.7V for my 3Q. The thing I am having difficulties with is finding out if the cable I bought cold handle powering my 3Q. I am myself such a noob with electronics that I can not tell.

I have not begun using batteries to power my stuff yet. Still keeping it close enough to my house where I can use a wall outlet for the Astrolink power distribution box.

In this review the 3Q seemed to have much lower idle power consumption and a bit lower stress power consumption than running Windows. So, I can see it not getting quite as hot runnign linux. I am running Windows, and it does get quite hot. Uncomfotable to touch. Although, I have only had it running indoors, not outdoors where it would be a fews tens of degrees cooler.

Here is what I used:

a.aliexpress.com/_EGtEniZ

Or

a.aliexpress.com/_EyWtybP

And then

a.aliexpress.com/_Evpx1Wh

Or

a.aliexpress.com/_EGYBBzJ

Cheers

I use a USB-C power cable similar to the one you're using and haven't had any power problem so it should be OK.

I run all but one of my telescope systems from battery power. My dolly transportable telescope is run with a 12V 100Ah LiFePO4 battery, my DIY mini observatory is run from a cold tolerant SiO2 12V 100Ah battery (-40C to 65C operating range) charged by solar panels, so I do not rely on the power grid. I have to admit though that I use a Samlex IDC-100A-12 DC to DC converter that gives me 12.5 volts from an input ranging from 9 to 18 volts, in order to protect the equipment from under/over voltage; all this under fused circuits. I guess it may not all be necessary but I assume it's like wearing belt and suspenders with stretched pants .

Good luck with your system.

Little report on the performance of the system

Yesterday I took maybe 2-3 hours of data and then started having trouble with the Camera. I believe they were just due to the USB adaptor I used with one of the power banks (which converted the USB's 5v to 8.4V with a dummy battery). Fortunately, I brought also my old homemade cable as a backup that uses directly the 8.2V output DC port of the same powerbank (a very old EasyACC PB20000AC). That one never failed me in the past and today it is wonderfully behaving (6 hours so far).

So I haven't checked the current left capacity of both power banks, but both the MeLe and the camera continue to work for now and taking 3-min shots .

For the connection I'm using my phone as a router and controling the thing from inside.

I started a megamosaic project on the Cygnus region, with horrible guiding (4-8 arcsec) by the way, and now I'm taking some images of the Heart and Soul nebulas with much better guiding both before and after meridian flip (~ 2 arcsec). Who knows why ...