Alternative method of powering a raspi

[tomexx]

Hi,
Got my raspberry pi and ordered a proper micro usb 5V/1A power supply.
However the PS is back ordered to arrive in 3 weeks

So meanwhile I've been using a smartphone P.S. It's only 700ma and works for the most part. But I'm my raspbmc is freezing everynow and then. Yesterday I checked the voltages on TP1 and TP2 and the voltage drops to 4.5V under heavy load. Not good.

Question:
Is there a provision for connecting external PS other than microUSB? I've got a big enough PS that I made in college (long time ago) and would like to solder couple of wires to the Raspi if possible.

Thanks,
Tom

[pluggy]

\you can feed the Pi power through the GPIO pins 5V and Gnd. Buy some female headers and you don't need to solder to the Pi.

http://elinux.org/RPi_Low-level_peripherals#Power_pins

[tomexx]

thanks pluggy, that's exactly what I've been looking for.

Tom

[tedhale]

Doing that will bypass the fuse, so it would be a good idea to add one between the PS and the GPIO pins.
That is what I am doing.

[Joe Schmoe]

Speaking of alternative ways of powering the Pi...

I recently tested this (see below) hookup - and it seems to work fine. What I am curious about is suggestions for how to test it more thoroughly. As I say, it seems to work fine, but I'm not sure if I have exercised it well enough to be confident of that.

The hookup is:
1) Pi: Latest version - with 512M and latest firmware.
2) Powered USB hub, which is actually USB connected to another PC laying around here. I.e., I am not using it as a USB hub in connection with the Pi. I'm only using it as a power source.
3) USB A male to micro-USB male cable (from a Kindle - used to charge the Kindle from a PC). I connect the USB A end to the powered hub and the micro-USB end to the Pi (and it boots right up).
4) No keyboard/mouse/video connected to the Pi. Access is by ssh.

I ssh in and everything looks fine. I transferred a 10M file to a remote host - that was fine. My understanding is that, in fact, the ethernet is the biggest power hog of all the components (about 230mA) so I figure exercising the ethernet is a good test.

Any other tests I should be running?