PiZ-SuperCapacitor Provides Just Enough Juice to Safely Shut Down Your Raspberry Pi Zero
Powered by a single supercapacitor and a Python script, the board offers just enough runtime on power loss to safely shut down.
Hardware designers Vikas and Abhinav Shukla have launched a crowdfunding campaign designed to save the microSD cards of Raspberry Pi Zero single-board computers by offering a supercapacitor-powered safe shutdown in the event of power loss: PiZ-SuperCap.
"We've all had unexpected shutdowns on our Raspberry Pi Zero. Whether its a lose cord, or your power going out, it leads to SD Card corruption which can lead to you losing valuable data," Shukla writes. "Simply put, no one likes unexpected shutdowns and loosing the programs and projects they have worked on."
"The solution: This is where the PiZ-SuperCap comes in picture. Simply connect it straight out of the box via the 40 GPIO pins and plug in your USB Power cable to the PiZ-SupCap and you're ready to go!"
The simple board has a micro-USB connection for power and a large supercapacitor. During normal use, power is transferred to the Raspberry Pi Zero via the 40-pin GPIO header; in the event of power loss, the feed switches to the supercapacitor and provides enough power for around 30 seconds of runtime.
30 seconds isn't much, but it's enough for a Python script that monitors the GPIO header to trigger a safe shutdown process, closing open files and powering the Raspberry Pi Zero off before the supercapacitor is emptied.
While all Raspberry Pi models share the same 40-pin GPIO header, the Skuklas note that the PiZ-SuperCapacitor is designed specifically for the low-power single-core Raspberry Pi Zero family and is unlikely to provide enough power for larger models; these should instead look towards designs like Tony John's Power Pi, which can drive a board for up to an hour from an 18650 battery.
The PiZ-SuperCapacitor is now on Kickstarter, priced at $12 early bird and $15 standard pricing.
