PiSugar S and PiSugar S Pro Bring Battery Backups to Your Raspberry Pi — at a Hefty Discount
The new models are as much as $20 cheaper than the PiSugar 2 range — though lack the on-board real-time clock feature.
PiSugar has launched a new pair of battery modules for the Raspberry Pi Zero and full-size Raspberry Pi families of single-board computers — and they come with a welcome discount over the cost of the previous generation.
PiSugar launched the first generation of its eponymous battery pack family two years ago, for the Raspberry Pi Zero. A year later, the company offered an upgraded version unsurprisingly dubbed the PiSugar2 and a larger PiSugar2 Pro for the full-size Raspberry Pi family — and added real-time clock functionality with timer-based wake-ups, too.
The PiSugar S and PiSugar S Pro, then, are the latest in what has become an annual refresh cycle. The smaller PiSugar S is based on a 1.2Ah battery with up to 2A output, includes a physical button tied to a Raspberry Pi Zero's general-purpose input/output (GPIO) header, and support for expanding the device to include wireless charging or solar power.
The PiSugar S Pro, labeled on its board as the PiSugar S Plus, focuses on the larger Raspberry Pi range, offering a 5Ah battery and a 3A power output — good enough to run a Raspberry Pi 3 Model B for over 10 hours, the company claims. Both micro-USB and USB Type-C ports are included for charging, while the smaller PiSugar S sticks with a single micro-USB port.
PiSugar has made previous designs available under an open-source licence on its GitHub repository, though at the time of writing the PiSugar S family was not included.
The new models don't mention real-time clock functionality, though still operate as an uninterruptible power supply. They also come at a discount over the last generation: The PiSugar S is priced at $27.99 and the PiSugar S Pro at $29.99, down from $39.99 and $49.99, respectively.
Both are now available on the PiSugar Kitchen Tindie store.