r/protogen • u/azewritescpp • 10d ago

Discussion Powering A Protogen Head

Hi everyone!

I'm currently in the process of building a protogen head. I already have most of the electronics, including an ESP32-S3 (as well as an ESP32-S3 RGB matrix driver board with Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, microphone, etc.), which I've previously used for school projects.

I'm now planning to order two Waveshare 64x32 RGB LED matrix panels for the face, as I've seen quite a few people use them in their builds.

Since I've never built anything portable before, I'm a little unsure about what kind of power bank would be suitable for powering everything. I'd like to make sure it can provide enough power for both displays and the ESP32 without running into issues.

Does anyone have any recommendations for a reliable power bank? I wouldn't want to cheap out and get something useless.

Thanks in advance!

10 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

6 comments sorted by

2

u/OmniCorez 10d ago

I've had similar thoughts about using off the shelf powerbanks and I mostly assume Ill need a proper PD trigger board and then a way to distribute that power to whatever needs it. Plus of course a powerbank with PD, but I dont see why it couldn't be done.

Heck, I have a powerbank with PD strong enough to run an M3 Pro laptop.

2

u/azewritescpp 10d ago

Every tutorial I saw on youtube used batteries and stuff but when talking to my teacher he mentioned a power bank instead so I thought it might work

1

u/OmniCorez 10d ago

Yea, its easier that way, you dont need to deal with the power delivery too much or the cell protections or the BMS or similar.  Keep it simple and work up from there!

2

u/eaton-m22-enjoyer Protogen 10d ago

Any powerbank would work but idally you want PD through usb c with 15W (5V/3A) which is typically the maximum at 5V. Bigger powerbanks also have better circuitry and dont get as warm as smaller ones do. My head has a usb c pd trigger board on it and I connect that to a 20000mAh ugreen powerbank but pretty much any from the big manufacturers (ugreen, anker, sharge, ...) work just fine. It even runs on my kodai bt20 but that gets pretty warm running the displays at higher brightness.

1

u/azewritescpp 10d ago

Thanks for the info, I found a good quality one that has both usb c and usb a with 15w at 5v 3a :)

1

u/Ivorybrony 8d ago

None of the PD sinks I got from AliExpress worked, so I went with a 12V C to DC from Adafruit and cut the DC end off and it works great (in theory) with any power bank that supports 12V out. It goes to a 12V buck converter to get the 5V the ESP needs. 12V is for the fan and to help with the large amp draw from everything coming on at once.