Key Takeaways
- Invest in a high-capacity power bank for your Raspberry Pi, especially on high-end models.
- Ideally, you should use RealVNC Viewer on your smartphone with a mobile hotspot.
- Alternatively, consider a touchscreen display for standalone use, but be prepared for potential issues.
The Raspberry Pi boards are some of the best SBCs for DIY projects, but there’s no reason to confine them within the bounds of your house. Thanks to their small size, it’s entirely possible to slip these devices into your pocket and use them on the move. But before you can bring your dreams of a portable Raspberry Pi to life, you’ll have to contend with the issues of powering and controlling the palm-sized system. So, I’ve put together a guide to help you free your Raspberry Pi from the shackles of cables, and use it anywhere outside your home lab.
Related
Raspberry Pi 5 review: The holy grail of DIY projects got even better (and rarer)
The Raspberry Pi 5 is one of the most powerful consumer-grade SBCs out there. Sadly, its limited stock means you’ll have a hard time finding one.
A high-capacity power bank is a must
You’re bound to see a low-wattage warning, though
The first peripheral you’ll need for your portable Pi is a power bank. Since the Raspberry Pi Foundation has steadily increased the voltage and current requirements for successive mainline models, an average power bank may not be able to provide enough wattage to run the Raspberry Pi at its full potential.
If you’re running a Raspberry Pi Zero setup, you can use a small-capacity power bank and expect reasonable performance as long as you don’t attempt to overclock the device or use a docking station to attach multiple peripherals to the device.
Meanwhile, the Raspberry Pi 5 will prove to be quite a hurdle if you try to use it with a low-capacity power bank. Then there’s the issue of the current draw: even the most popular smartphone power banks can only supply a 2A to 3A current, which is less than the 5A requirement set by the Raspberry Pi Foundation.
In my case, I was able to get my Raspberry Pi 5 up and running with a 20,000mAh power bank that supplied power at 5V/2.4A, less than half of the recommended rate of 5.1V/5A. This setup was barely sufficient to run a touchscreen display mounted to the GPIO pins (but more on that later).
However, this setup could power the latest and greatest Raspberry Pi with an FM radio module installed for a few hours. But since the TEA5767 module uses the same GPIO pins as the external display, I had to come up with something else when I tried to run my Raspberry Pi FM radio outside my home…
A smartphone with RealVNC Viewer
Don’t forget to switch on the mobile hotspot
When I flash a new microSD for my Raspberry Pi projects, I make it a habit to set up a RealVNC server inside the SBC. Doing so makes most of my projects a lot simpler as I don’t need to constantly switch back and forth between my PC and my Raspberry Pi. Fortunately, this method works exceedingly well if you’re trying to use your Raspberry Pi as a portable device.
While switching on the wireless hotspot will drain your phone’s battery, I’d still prefer doing so as using USB tethering for this purpose beats the entire point of a portable Pi. Plus, we already have the power supply cable connected to the Raspberry Pi, and there’s no point in introducing extra wire clutter, especially if you’re operating the SBC on the move.
I’ve already created a guide on how to set up a headless Raspberry Pi, but here’s a short version featuring the steps to install it on an Android phone:
1. Use the Raspberry Pi Configuration menu to enable the VNC setting inside the Interface Options.
2. Likewise, switch from the Wayland backend to X11 under the Advanced Settings tab of the configuration tool.
3. Download RealVNC Viewer via Google Play on your Android phone and turn on your Mobile hotspot.
4. Switch to your Raspberry Pi and log in to your phone’s hotspot connection using the Network icon on the Taskbar.
5. You’ll notice a pop-up message containing your IP address in the top-right corner of the screen.
6. Launch RealVNC on your smartphone, and click on the Add button.
7. Enter the IP address of your Raspberry Pi before giving it a Name and clicking on Continue.
8. Type the Username and Password, and hit Continue.
With that, you’ll be able to access everything on your Raspberry Pi with just a tap of your phone. Although RealVNC is my preferred VNC application, you can also use other apps for this purpose.
(Optional) Use a touchscreen display
Prone to issues, but decent for a standalone setup
If you just want to use your Raspberry Pi as a standalone device without controlling it from your smartphone, then you can pair it with a touchscreen display. However, this method can result in issues, especially if your screen uses GPIO pins instead of USB connectivity.
When I tried using mine with a 20,000 power bank, the screen started displaying visual glitches when I connected it to the GPIO pins. The results were somewhat better when I plugged it into the power bank and paired it to my Raspberry Pi 5 using the HDMI cable.
Related
I installed Android on a Raspberry Pi – Here’s how I did it
Check out our detailed guide on how to turn your Raspberry Pi into an Android device
Unfortunately, the display limited my OS choice to just LineageOS as none of the other operating systems supported touchscreen functionality. The Bookworm version of Raspberry Pi OS is rife with issues when enabling touch input, while downgrading to Bullseye isn’t an option as the Raspberry Pi 5 does not support anything older than Bookworm. Heck, I even had to head home and connect my Raspberry Pi to my monitor, so I could enable the option to use touchscreen input on Lineage OS.
If you’re curious, then here’s what you need to do:
1. Open the Settings app.
2. Navigate to the System tab and click on Raspberry Pi settings.
3. Enable the Touchscreen option.
A portable Raspberry Pi for all your DIY needs
There are plenty of benefits to using your smartphone to control the Raspberry Pi instead of a touchscreen display. For instance, your GPIO pins won’t be occupied and, since the smartphone is connected wirelessly, there’s zero additional power drawn from the GPIO pins or the USB/HDMI ports. Finally, you can enable RealVNC on a multitude of operating systems, while setting up the touchscreen functionality of your display can require a bit of elbow grease on most OS, assuming that it even works in the first place!
Related
10 simple Raspberry Pi projects for beginners
You don’t need to be a DIY god to create these projects with your Raspberry Pi