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I am building a robot that uses an arduino to drive 4 mecanum wheels, which will be controlled by a Raspberry pi 4 8GB with the Lobe Machine Learning Hat via a serial connection.

I'm fine with having the robot be "wired" for the development, but I would like the final product to be completely wireless. I've purchased a power bank from Amazon that claims to have a 5V/3A output via a USBC port, but I'm skeptical.

Does anyone have any recommendations for a portable power solution for the pi + lobe camera + arduino uno + 4 DC motors, and potentially a few other sensors? I'm also looking for any other guides/videos that build something similar.

Thank you!

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The Lithium polymer and Lithium ion batteries are a staple for this sort of robotics rig. They produce voltage levels in multiples of 3.7-4.2v. You’ll need at least a 2-cell series (2S).

Since your control circuitry will require logic-level voltages, you’d use a Buck converter to take the battery output down to 5v for the Pi and Arduino. 1A and 3A modules are available and should satisfy just about any small number of sensors that you could wire to those chips. Do the math to find what your current needs are.

For the motors, it’s common to run them straight from the battery. Here you’ll want to make sure the battery produces the voltage range desired by the motors you have. Be aware that speeds will decline slightly as your battery discharges. If you want a more controlled voltage source for the motors, you could design your own Buck converter for that.

Be sure to take the appropriate precautions (flyback diodes) for any power rails that feed inductive loads like motors.

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For arduino and raspberry, powerbank is enough to power them for several hours. But the only problem i ever face when using powerbank is they sometime auto turn off because how little arduino current draw.

For dc motor, use lipo or any equvalent battery. So you would have enough power to move your wheels and make your robot have better mobility.

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