Tip: Tricking Powerbanks to Always Staying On

I’m not quite sure if this is helpful to anyone else, but recently, I’ve been dabbling on some bookshelf lighting and the biggest limitation for me was not having an outlet. I’ve been able to find 5V COB LED Strips that are RF remote controlled (controlled by my Bond Bridge), but I needed a way to power them. I bought an INUI 20,000 mah power bank, but the problem I was running into is it would shut off completely when the light strips were off.

I know Voltaic Systems sells an “Always On” power bank but they range between $60-90, which is easily 3x as much.

Someone here gave me a great idea of using an old USB receiver, however, I quickly found out not any USB receiver would do. It was specifically the Logitech Unifying Receiver that worked. When I looked up its power draw, someone complained it was drawing around 3W, which is probably why it works to keep this particular power bank on.

I hope this helps someone else!

Edit: The mini LED lights for cars did not work. Maybe they really weren’t rated for 1W. I’m going to buy a used Logitech Unifying Receiver for a 2nd power bank I have.

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I have a similar light setup in my gun safe. The power bank that I know of that will stay on is the TalentCell line available on Amazon. They have several different sizes. They are designed to power remote cameras and light strips and have a 12V and 5V usb outlet. They will not shut off on you. They are of very good quality. Bigger is better but it just depends on how much you want to spend. You can find them here: Amazon.com: TalentCell

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Not sure what you mean by "how you're going to charge it". I just charge them when they get low. I have 3 of them and two of them have been going strong for over 2 years. They are designed for this exact task, supplying power to light strips and cameras when you do not have an electrical outlet near by to run your devices,

I'm using mine for hub backup as opposed a remote power situation, so I suppose my comment is just stupid. :slight_smile: I deleted it.

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Thank you for the link. Do you know on top of your head which one has the smallest profile? I am basically hiding these behind a 1” lip under my shelves that are only 3.50 in depth.

Edit: I guess technically I could hide them behind the shelf since it’s a Murphy door. It wouldn’t be too hard to just grab it to charge.

The 12V 6000mAh/5V 12000mAh one has the smallest profile but it also has the smallest capacity. I have one those and it would last about 3-4 months between charging in my safe. I later bought one of the bigger ones. I can't remember having charged the bigger one yet. It has been in the safe for about 6 months.

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What are you using the powerbank for? I should have tracked when I first placed the 20K mah powerbank. I think it was sometime early last week. To keep it on, I have that 3W usb receiver attached to it at all times, but the actual strip lights themselves are 9.5W and always on from sunset to whenever we set the hub to Night Mode (usually around midnight). It also turns on/off based on motion during the day. I believe it’s reading 75% now.

I have it inside the safe and it runs a motion sensor that turns on a strip of led's that is probably about 18 feet long. The led's are only on when the safe door is open, so not that much but the battery bank powers the motion and remains on 24/7.

We are having a new home built. I purchased a Reolink go ultra kit with a solar panel and an 7600mah internal battery. The camera is rated down to -10C so I thought I was good.

The primary reason for the camera was bc my wife had the idea to do a time lapse capture of the built (I never would have thought of that myself) and honestly it has been awesome being able to take a peak at progress along the way.

Well I learned that the internal battery stops charging at 0C. Going back I still can not find this detail in the spec. Yes I know lipo batteries can not charge below 0C but I just assumed that if the camera was rated to -10C that the discharge on the battery would have kept it warm enough to allow charging. But the camera only sips 20ma on average.

I also learned the hard way that most usb batteries turn off when there isn’t enough current draw.

I ended up buying two of the voltaic V75 and I can not say enough good things about them. They are spec’ed to shutdown at -15C and I actually think they shut down closer to -10C but they do come back online when the temp recovers.

So when the temp drops the camera starts consuming from the internal battery and then switches back to being supplied from the external.

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Yup... Learned this, too, which is why I've been trying to figure out ways to "trick" them lol. At least for this particular power bank I have, 3W seems to be high enough to keep it alive, but low enough that the battery lasts quite a while.

This is great to know! My husband really wants to set up game cameras around our property so this is probably the way to go with the winters!

Really cool idea to do a time lapse video of your build, btw! Not sure if ours would have been as impressive since we only did renovations haha

Before I purchased the Voltaic battery I played with a little esp32 module and pulsed a 130ma load on and off, so with the battery i had, a half wat load was sufficient. But i had to keep the load on for 40% of the time to prevent it turning off. And the esp32 consumed 35ma all the time. Even though i had a 40000mah external battery, it only added a few days to my runtime.

Thank you. Again, not my idea but i think it's going to turn out great.

Thank you again for the recommendation on the TalentCell! I couldn’t get the Power Bank idea to work with the LED lights at all. I ended up getting the 5V 12000mah one, but I may replace with a bigger one if it will need to be charged more often than a month. These are actually pretty decently priced compared to the Voltaic System ones.

So if I understand what you need, it's a powerbank that will turn on if a usb led lightstrip with a motion sensor is triggered. I had the same issue and found a power bank that works for me. Originally purchased at wally world. I use it for a motion sensor light strip inside a lazy susan. As often as I use that lazy susan, it rarely needs charged. Maybe every 6 months just guessing.

Pretty sure it can still be found. Model KCDPB02

At least the power bank I had (INUI on Amazon), it would turn off automatically if there wasn’t anything drawing power from it. And I found most of the power banks are like that. So when the led strip lights are off, the power bank shuts off, and the lights won’t turn on the next time (no power). But the TalentCell shared here actually has an off/on switch, so as long as the power bank is flipped to on, it’ll supply power the whole time.

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