If I have a USB powered device, could I leave it plugged into a portable power bank (like the kind you charge your phone with) as a power outage backup? (lemmy.world)

submitted 5 months ago by MeatsOfRage@lemmy.world to c/asklemmy@lemmy.world

34 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Basically as the title says. We have semi frequent power outages where I live. The noise machine in my daughter's room goes out and wakes her up. If I were to buy a USB powered one, plug it into a power bank like one of those 10000ma ones you get for charging cell phones, would it have continuous power. Basically like a cheap UPS

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[-] FartsWithAnAccent@fedia.io 3 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

As long as the battery bank supplies sufficient power continuously, it would certainly power it! If it doesn't, you'd have to look at a battery bank to power the device but I'd bet your daughter's noise machine is likely going to work fine on anything.

However, skatrek47 brings up a good point: The battery would need to just be powering the machine (unless you had an automatic cutover, but that seems like overkill for this application).

For your use case, I'd say just run it off the battery all the time and charge it once the battery gets around 20%.

There's USB batteries that'll do passthrough charging too, but keeping a battery charged all the time will kill it, so you might as well just use the battery.

If you wanted to go nuts, you could get an APC or something but that would be pretty silly for this.

this post was submitted on 14 Jun 2024

76 points (95.2% liked)

Ask Lemmy

27008 readers

590 users here now

A Fediverse community for open-ended, thought provoking questions

Please don't post about US Politics. If you need to do this, try !politicaldiscussion@lemmy.world

Rules: (interactive)

1) Be nice and; have fun

Doxxing, trolling, sealioning, racism, and toxicity are not welcomed in AskLemmy. Remember what your mother said: if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. In addition, the site-wide Lemmy.world terms of service also apply here. Please familiarize yourself with them

2) All posts must end with a '?'

This is sort of like Jeopardy. Please phrase all post titles in the form of a proper question ending with ?

3) No spam

Please do not flood the community with nonsense. Actual suspected spammers will be banned on site. No astroturfing.

4) NSFW is okay, within reason

Just remember to tag posts with either a content warning or a [NSFW] tag. Overtly sexual posts are not allowed, please direct them to either !asklemmyafterdark@lemmy.world or !asklemmynsfw@lemmynsfw.com. NSFW comments should be restricted to posts tagged [NSFW].

5) This is not a support community.

It is not a place for 'how do I?', type questions. If you have any questions regarding the site itself or would like to report a community, please direct them to Lemmy.world Support or email info@lemmy.world. For other questions check our partnered communities list, or use the search function.

Reminder: The terms of service apply here too.