Thank you for the response. I wasn’t sure whether I could connect the Tindie module directly to the batteries, since they’re part of a solar power system and the voltage can vary between about 12.5 V and 14.6 V. To be on the safe side, my initial idea was to use a cigarette-lighter PD car charger as an extra layer, because those are designed to handle voltage fluctuations reliably.That seems overly complicated. Too many levels of conversion.
The Tindie board supports DC input as well as USB-C PD input - so you could connect it directly to the 12V from the Car power socket. It should take less than 2.5A at 12V input to give 5A at 5V output.
There are other (possibly cheaper) units that will convert 12-24V to 5V 5A. Some have a USB lead on the output.
I think I've seen DC-DC converters that provide 5V 5A PD for the Pi 5 - so no config changes would be needed. But the ones I recall seeing (on AliX) weren't cheap and were bulky with heatsinks and fans. It should be possible to make something much smaller to do the job from a 12V input.
That said, it would definitely simplify the setup if I could eliminate that extra layer altogether. I’ll also be running quite a many peripherals, as I plan to use the Raspberry Pi 5 as a streaming and storage device for watching 4K videos at the summer cottage.
Statistics: Posted by josk — Fri Dec 26, 2025 1:53 pm