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Powering Pi

For a while now I’ve been annoyed somewhat by Raspberry Pi power supplies.

Raspberry Pis are supposed to be a compact, credit-card sized computer that runs on fairly low power. And it does. You can (and I have) run it quite well from a standard powerpack and MicroUSB cable.

It works pretty well, if you’re just trying to use one. You plug it into a socket, and it works. But my desktop machine runs off one socket too. As do all my laptops.

My problem is that, for a low power device, it requires as much real-estate in my sockets as any other device. The official PSU is a 1-to-1 connection.

So, in my local supermarket, at a discount price, I stumbled across a USB power station. One plug, 4 outputs. 2xUSB-3, 1xQC3 and 1 USB-C.

Seems to work pretty well so far. Powers 2x Pi3 and 1x Pi0 without much issue. I wonder why the manufacturers of the device don’t consider other power solutions than 1-to-1.