Maker Bandi Ba has a mission positive to curiosity any Vilros PiDock 400 house owners with an urge to improve: a information to changing the laptop-style docking station to assist the newer, and significantly extra highly effective, Raspberry Pi 500 wedge-format single-board pc.
“The [Vilros] PiDock 400 was designed completely for the Raspberry Pi 400,” Ba explains. “Nonetheless, with the discharge of the brand new Raspberry Pi 500 many people hoped to make use of the identical docking station because the two gadgets share practically equivalent type elements. Sadly, the PiDock 400 doesn’t provide sufficient energy for the RPi 500. When related, you’ll see a number of warnings reminiscent of: ‘This energy provide shouldn’t be able to supplying 5A. Energy to peripherals can be restricted.’ Whereas the RPi 400 solely wanted a 5V 3A energy supply, the RPi 500 requires 5V 5A.”
In case you’ve a Vilros PiDock 400 gathering mud because the launch of the Raspberry Pi 500, why not deal with it to an improve? (📷: Bandi Ba)
The Raspberry Pi 400 was the corporate’s first try at a real shopper product, packing a wider variant of the Raspberry Pi 4 Mannequin B single-board pc right into a wedge-style keyboard housing impressed by basic eight-bit residence computer systems just like the Commodore 64 and Atari 400. The launch of the Raspberry Pi 5, with its dramatically extra highly effective processor, introduced with it the unsurprising launch of the Raspberry Pi 500 — and later the upgraded range-topping Raspberry Pi 500+, which doubles the RAM to 8GB, provides an inside M.2 slot with 256GB SSD, and strikes to a mechanical keyboard with RGB backlighting.
Vilros’ PiDock 400, in the meantime, launched shortly after the unique Raspberry Pi 400 as a comparatively high-price add-on designed to transform it into a real all-in-one — offering a laptop computer form-factor by which the wedge nestles with entry to a touchpad and a show, although no inside battery. Energy is fed from the PiDock 400 to the Raspberry Pi 400, however there is a catch: the PiDock 400 can solely provide the 5V 3A the Raspberry Pi 400 expects, and never the 5A required by the extra power-hungry Raspberry Pi 500.
Ba’s answer: a bit hackery by which the present 5V energy enter is bypassed for a 12V DC enter on a barrel-jack, fed right into a buck converter able to dropping it all the way down to the required 5V at 5A. It isn’t the trickiest of modifications, however does require taking the PiDock’s case aside and soldering new energy connections — plus a bit, wholly-reversible, modification to the Raspberry Pi 500’s firmware to have it acknowledge the facility provide as having the ability to maintain 5A at 5V.
The complete course of is documented over on Instructables.
