In article , James Harris wrote:
> I was looking for a basic UPS which would allow a Pi to keep
> running for a few minutes if power were lost or while the Pi
> was being transferred from one mains socket to another. Ideally,
> it would tell the OS to shut down, if necessary, and would
> restart the machine when the mains came back online.
>
> Well, I came across the following one which looks excellent. It
> seems to do all I wanted and the battery can be upgraded to give
> longer life.
>
> https://www.modmypi.com/raspberry-pi/power-1051/ups-boards-1051/
> ups-pico

Interesting. That's quite a full-featured solution -- it does rather more
than others I've seen (it has a built-in RTC, for example).

> Any opinions on it? And as it is out of stock at the moment, would you
> recommend any similar UPS?

I've never played with one, so I can't comment beyond saying that it
seems to be a decently well thought-out piece of kit.

As for alternatives ... I've previously mentioned here the Adafruit
Powerboost 1000C (not to be confused with the Powerboost 1000 (without
the C) which is just a battery charger) and I've recently discovered the
products from Alchemy Power (such as the Pi-Z UpTime for the Pi Zero).

I haven't actually played with the Alchemy products, yet, but I do have a
Powerboost board and a suitable LiPo battery. That's well put together
(like most Adafruit stuff) and it seems to work very nicely but I haven't
yet satisfied myself that the board can't kill the battery by continuing
to draw a little power for itself after it has shut down the Pi (or
whatever). It may be fine, but I have seen one or two reports of people
who've experienced dead batteries with this board. It may be that all
that's needed is a battery with internal protection (and I need to check
whether mine has, they are available both with and without).

You'll find both of these (in the UK, at least) at Pimoroni or one of the
other usual suspects.

--
Cheers,
 Daniel.

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