Mini Raspberry Pi Server With Built In UPS & Stats Display

[Music] today we're going to be building a mini raspberry pi server with a built-in ups the raspberry pi makes a great server for a nas all for media streaming home automation or even a home security hub for your cameras all of these projects would benefit from having a built-in ups to ensure that the pi is kept running in the event of a power interruption the ups we're going to be using is this ups plus module that geek pi sent me to share with you it looks like a relatively simple board with a prominent battery holder on one side but it actually has a number of great features including power management circuits and rtc communication with the part this enables low voltage safe shutdown and automatic restarts power is applied to the ups through either usbc or usb microport with the board taking advantage of the usb 3.1 protocol to allow high input power through a higher charging voltage [Music] the board also has three usb ports on the front that allow a combined output of up to four amps including the pass consumption there's also a battery monitor in the form of four leds that lights up to indicate the current battery level lastly there's a function button on the side this is the fifth revision of this board which was completed in december of last year the ups is mounted onto the pi using some supplied brass standoffs and nuts unlike most raspberry pi hats the ups is designed to mount underneath the power and has these little spring-loaded gold contacts that make contact with the underside of the header pins this is a really nice feature as it keeps all of your gpio pins available the board takes two 18650 cells that are connected in parallel so the ups boosts the voltage of the batteries to the 5 volts required by the part i'm going to be using these 2 500 milliamp hour batteries you may have also noticed that the ups turned on as soon as the first battery was inserted you can then turn it on and off using the function button the ups also includes a base plate to mount it onto we're not going to be using this as we're going to be building the power and the ups into a custom case i'm going to use a low profile arse tower to provide cooling to the power and i'm going to add an rtc oled display to the front of the case to display some performance stats for the part as well as stats for the ups i used my previous ice tower power case i modified and added the usb port cutouts i also had to move the oled display up a bit to clear the top of the pi's usb port i then 3d printed the case in grey pla [Music] i also made some modifications to the clear acrylic side panels i had to move the power ports higher up and then add additional cutouts for the ups i also added a couple of vent holes along the bottom so the air would be forced around the pipe to cool the ups and batteries [Music] [Music] with the case and side panels made up we can start assembling the server i started by screwing the standoffs into the case i then put the batteries into the holder and mounted the ups you need to be careful from this point as there isn't any way to isolate the batteries so the ups is powered and you risk shorting or potentially damaging the board if it touches the metal standoffs in any area it's not supposed to the smaller brass standoffs hold the ups in place and we can then mount the power onto them making sure that the terminals are properly seated on the gpu opens the pie is then held in place with the standoffs from the ice tower before installing the ice tower i'm going to install the oled display this just pushes into the holder in the case and i'll connect the ribbon cable to the pins on the back to plug into the raspberry pi these provide power to the display and connect to the power's rtc pins [Music] now we can install the ice tower i removed the fan from the heatsink as i'm going to move this onto the side panel to push into the entire case i'm going to use the rgb fan that was supplied with the ass tower as an alternative to the plain black one screw the ice tower onto the part again making sure that you don't touch the metal bracket onto any of the components on the part or the gpu opens the part looks like it's still off but rather be cautious i mounted the fan onto the side panel by pressing some m3 nuts into the pockets on the fan and then screwing the fan into place with some m3 by 8 millimeter button head screws i then tried to fit the side panel it was at this point that i saw that the ice tower was wider than the standard ice tower and clashed with the back of the fan so i had to redesign the side panels to move the fan to the other side [Music] i then mounted the fan onto the other side panel and screwed the side panels onto the case using some more in three by eight millimeter screws the last thing to do is put the sd card into the pi and power it up i'm just using a fresh install of raspberry pi os the power boots that i pursue is the power cable is plugged in so it looked like the ups was working correctly so far i'm going to go over to the ups plus wiki to see how to install the script that allows the automatic shutdown and see what other ups information is available on the part you can see all of the information that's available to be read by the power in the register mapping chart it's a pretty comprehensive list of stats it's a straightforward process to download the example script that allows you to make changes to the general settings and access the available data on the ups to install the automatic shutdown protection we just run a single line next we'll have a look at the example script and the script that i used previously to display the pi's performance stats i'm going to integrate the two to produce a second stats display for the ups that shows the key ups information i'll also add some code to switch between the two displays every few seconds if we run the example script we get a print out of almost all the stats available on the ups the information i'm going to put onto the ups display is the power's voltage and current being drawn the battery voltage and capacity and lastly the charging current and power along with the charging status let's try run the script and see what we get on the display i'll leave a link to my script in the video description next let's test the ups by pulling out the power cable and make sure the part keeps running and that the display shows us the battery level and current charging status so it looks like that's all working correctly i was able to get just under an hour and a half of runtime from a fully charged set of batteries this would obviously depend on the capacity of your batteries for most people this would be long enough to ride out the short power interruption and your power would be safely shut down if the interruption lasted longer than this i'm going to see if i can plug the display's power cable into the ups as well so the ups has enough capacity to power the display as well although this is pretty close to its limit there are two issues i found with the ups through my testing both of them probably won't affect you if you plan on running the ups continuously like most people do but it would have a common solution the first is isolating the batteries now granted if i designed a case a bit better i'd be able to install the batteries after installing the ups but it would be nice to have a physical switch to isolate the batteries from the board when you didn't want any power on it at the moment when the batteries are in the ups you need to be careful not to touch any of the components or the pcb traces or you might damage it the second is a physical means to turn off the ups which could be done with the same isolation switch the board has this function button on the side but i haven't been able to find any information on what it's actually supposed to do the board does turn on or off if you push the button but on two occasions i've turned the board off using the switch and then come back after 10 to 15 minutes and the board has come back on again other than the isolation of the batteries this ups is a really neat and compact solution to provide a reliable battery backup on your part with automatic safe shutdown and stats available let me know what you think of it in the comment section below thanks for watching please remember to like this video if you enjoyed it and subscribe for more tech and electronics projects tutorials and reviews you

Channel: Michael Klements

Views: 1,149,865

Rating: 4.9529409 out of 5

Keywords: Raspberry Pi, GeeekPi, 52Pi, UPS, Server, 18650 Battery, Battery Backup, OLED Display, Pi 4B, I2C, Automatic Shutdown, Low Voltage, UPS Stats, Stats Display, Power Management, Ice Tower, Ribbon Cable

Id: clbt12upuaA

Length: 11min 3sec (663 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 30 2021