Hey guys, so say you are out doing an event… You have your proton pack on, the lights are going, the sound is humming… How many hours can you expect to get usage out of the pack?
Say all of the electronics are GBfans, which mine will be, I just am waiting on my blue brick to arrive, but does anyone have a good idea how long they will go?
It would suck to be out on Halloween and have it die on me during an event. I kinda am thinking to purchase a second blue brick for the purpose of swapping in case I need to.
I use scratch built electronics and everything in my pack is 5v including the speakers, so my results are going to be pretty different that people running GBFans parts and car speakers. I use a 20,000mah pack I got on Amazon for about $25 and my pack will run with idle lights and sound for around 40 hours. The speakers arent the loudest, but you can hear them clearly on a convention floor.
I’m using a pure GBFans electronics setup, and had the Blue Brick alone at first. It would run around 6-hours before dying out on me, which was a slight issue for me as I generally have to travel at least an hour to get to events, and it started leading to a problem where I would run out of juice mid-way through. It doesn’t help that the blue brick is kind of a cheapo LiPo as far as they go. However, I sought some advice on Facebook and some Ghostheads recommended the Talentcell battery (Amazon.com) , so I snagged one of those and wired it together so the Talentcell acts as my primary power and the blue brick actively recharges it as it goes. Sooooo, with a combined mAh of 13,600, I don’t know. 8+ hours, it lasted the entire day of Fan Fest and still had plenty of juice after.
Links in this post may be affiliate links. Purchases made through them help support this site at no additional cost to you.
"So, I have two packs that have full lights and sound. One is a mad scientist project that shoves all kinds of stuff into a pack and is hardly applicable to this conversation, but the other is very similar to what you are putting together, though it does have its own weirdness to it;
It has a single usb cable that is the power input, ie what I connect the power bank to. That usb cable goes to a USB 3.1 splitter. Specifically this one:
I specifically purchased a USB 3.1 hub because the amp output of .9amps per usb port (of course thats dependent on the input, but I wanted to make sure I had the capacity) and I wanted to be able to just plug stuff in.
I have the Arduino board plugged into one port for power and I have the soundboard wired to the Arduino board for power (I believe. Its been awhile since I have looked at that one) and then I have two USB speakers connected to two other ports in the hub. I followed CountDeMonet’s plans almost exactly when wiring up all the lights, etc. to the gun and rest of the pack (except I left the resistors out of the bargraph, but thats another story). I used 2 USB powered speakers from Microcenter (I have the volume on each set at about 80-85% of max) for the sound. The pack isnt the loudest Ive ever heard, but it can be heard well enough at a con to be shown off, so its not bad:
As I said everything is run from a single power bank. I have used the one I link above many times and it will run the pack on idle with hum for around 40 hours…In case you need to do that.
I have also used these el-cheapo power bank from microcenter (there is one close to me).
It is a 2,600mah battery pack with a .8A output and it will run that pack for around 4.5 hours.
I dont know what kind of speakers you are using, so it might be an Amps issue, I dont know. However it is possible to run a pack with very satisfactory sound on a 1.2amp port (or less apparently)."
Edit
This is the 20,000mah power bank I use. I like it so much Ive bought 3 at this point.
Thanks for this in depth answer! This is a great idea for power. Unfortunately, none of the links are working. Looks like they are cut off for some reason