Pi Uninterrupted: OpenElectrons PiUPS

Deepak and Nitin Patil from Mindsensors have created another awesome Kickstarter project under the OpenEelectrons.com flag: the PiUPS, an uninterruptable power supply for the Raspberry Pi in a very compact package.

It’s an inline power supply system that constantly charges the backup batteries when it’s connected to the mains or another external power source.  When this external power source gets disconnected, it will automatically switch to the batteries without as much as a hiccup, as far as your Raspberry Pi is concerned.  The set comes with at least a USB cable to supply the power to the Pi and a connector and cable to allow you to get the status from the PiUPS. This would allow you cleanly shut your Pi down when the batteries of your PiUPS go below  a critical level.  The more advanced rewards come with additional bits and bobs, like a mounting kit, a uSD card adapter, etc.

I can think of all sorts of handy scenarios for using this:

• Your Pi file server can shut down gracefully if the power goes out, thus reducing the risk of corrupted file systems.
• You can leave your robot on and charge it while you program it, then disconnect and test it.
• Swap out the batteries of your robot, without having to turn it off.

Another cool thing you can do is hook up one to the other, so you can have even more power at your disposal.  This would allow your robot or server to run for even longer when it gets disconnected from the mains.  A single PiUPS holds a charge of 2000 mAh and should allow you to run your Pi for at least 2 hours, depending on what you do with it, of course.

You can read much about this project right here: [LINK].   As of writing this (6 March 2014), the project is at 72% of its funding goal with 20 days to go!  Go pledge now and you own one of these by end of May!