Introduction: Particle Core - Portable Power

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I have been using the Particle Core for quite sometime and the best thing about the particle core is it is small and portable. The particle Core consumes 3.3v at an average of 150mA so I out some requests to suggest a portable power supply and I did just that during various projects I did use various power supply's.

And in this instructable I'm going to show you how to find a suitable power supply for your core or photon depending on the project you are building.

So lets get started.....

Step 1: Home Use

As you know I have been posting some tutorials on how to use a Core in Home automation, controlling lights and power outlets. For projects where the core needs to stay connected to the internet for a long time it is better to power it from a wall outlet rather than use batteries, I had ripped open a 5V phone charger and included that to power the core, if you recall from a previous tutorial.

It is better to use a phone charger than using batteries or connecting it to your computer if you tend to keep it on for days or for a really long time.

Step 2: Wearables

When designing wearable the key is to make it as small as possible, so the most likely solution would be to use a battery. Selecting a suitable battery for this us is necessary, the core drags a lot of power when connected to the internet, Li-ion batteries will generally do the trick as they come in small packages and have a good current rating.

I had a heart rate senor project, which I used some time ago, I used a Li-ion battery rated at 1000mAh the battery was quite small and portable. The core used to drag 150mAH when connected to the internet and around 40 when not, I have another instructable that shows this test. So on calculating 1000/150 which will give about 6 hours of charge. I got it to give me around 17 hours by setting up a button, which when clicked will connect to the internet and then turn it off again.

Step 3: Battery Source

You can get these Li-ion batteries on eBay, I got some of these batteries from an old laptop. There battery pack had 6 cells and each were rated 3.3v at 2200mAh. This is the same Cell I used to power the fish feeder inscrutable as it gave me roughly a days charge. If you don't like experimenting with batteries you can get a cheap and portable power bank which also works fine.

If you got any other suggestions, leave a comment below and I will try it out.