Safeguard Your Raspberry Pi with a Supercapacitor UPS.
Power outages are no longer a threat. The qUPS-P-SC can handle short interruptions without an unexpected stop. For extended outages, it provides the critical time your Raspberry Pi needs for a graceful shutdown. Long-lasting, maintenance-free, environmentally friendly. Operates reliably across a wide temperature range.
Learn About Our Approach
Goal – What We Wanted
Create a UPS solution for Raspberry Pi or compatible product, which is durable, has low carbon footprint, and can be used in harsch environment.
As the battery is the bottleneck of the tradional UPS solutions for these requirements, we have chosen SuperCapacitor for energy storage. It has extra high charge cycle rate, and wide operational temperature range. It is much greener product.
Design Considerations – How We Were Thinking
From Factor
For easy assembly, qUPS has HAT form factor. Simply connect it via the 40 pin header.
Expendable Capacity
A powerful 100-120F supercapacitor for providing reliable backup power. Capacity is expandable with an external module.
High Efficiency
Highly efficient boost converter for increasing the backup time.
Minimize inline energy loss
Offline topology - very efficient in inline state. Disadvantage: very short (<1ms) voltage degradation at power loss. Raspberry Pi can handle such issue.
Stackability
Pins on the connector are long ones, all can be accessed from the top of the product.
Communication Ability
Capable of warning the Raspberry Pi in case of input power loss, and at low energy level of the energy storage for proper shutdown.
GPIO communication
Easy programming. Avoid extra load on capacitance limited I2C bus. Only 3 GPIO ports for communication. 3 options to choose from.
Disable communication
All GPIO ports can be used for other purpose.
Reliable connection
Massive, soldered pin header for power and signal connection. Pogo pins are not reliable.
Zero firmware
Everything is done by hardware.
Shutdown issue handling
If the power is coming back, when the Raspberry Pi is already in shutdown mode, it can stuck in this state. qUPS is able to handle this situation properly.
Safe boot
In AUTO mode the Raspberry Pi will be powered, if there are enough time for booting the OS and make a proper shutdown process. This level is adjustable.
Avoid restart cycle
If the qUPS’s energy level is too low in backup mode, it can’t power the system. Without a load, it restores 5V, causing the system to restart repeatedly. In AUTO mode, the qUPS switches off the power below an adjustable energy threshold.
On mode – the reason
In AUTO mode, the Raspberry Pi doesn’t start immediately, and the supercapacitor’s full capacity isn’t used. ON mode solves these, but safety features are lost.
Parameters – What We Have Designed
Energy storage device
Physical parameters
Electric parameters
Power Supply
Connectors
Communication
Setup
Safety
Control
Indication
Software
Compare the qUPS family members
Documentation – Where you can find more information
GithubImages – How It Looks Like
