Power Over Ethernet for your Raspberry Pi
I’m amazed it took this long, considering the amount of uses the Raspberry Pi has already been put to. But there’s a Kickstarter campaign running, with ten days left to go (at the time of writing), for an add-on board for the Raspberry Pi that brings Power over Ethernet.
The project has been created by Pi Supply, a dedicated shop and resource site for all thing Pi related and one that has some pretty interesting products currently in stock.
The Pi PoE board is a simple enough add-on, one that slots directly over the GPIO pins, but still leaving them free to add other add-on boards, while offering an intelligent power management circuit through a single Ethernet connection, while using a secondary Ethernet port to jumper over a patch cable to the Raspberry Pi Ethernet port.
It’s quite simple, but remarkably clever. And what’s more, it’ll open up the Raspberry Pi to those projects that have so far eluded it due to a lack of power. A quick example would be some kind of surveillance setup, where it’s simple to run an Ethernet cable, but not power. And if you don’t have a suitable solar power solution or some other kind of battery backup, then PoE is the perfect choice.
Power To The Pi!
There’s also a handy on/off button located on one corner of the Pi PoE that be configured for intelligent power management routines. And, if the above wasn’t enough to stir your interest, the creator has included overload and circuit protection, over temperature protection, mounting struts and a small patch cable to hook the PoE board and the Raspberry Pi up together.
The current pledges come to £24,036, well over the £10,000 target, so the Pi PoE will be eventually become a welcomed addition to most Raspberry Pi users. Don’t worry, though, if you read this and the time has run out, I’m sure that Pi Supply will have the board available via its online store as soon as possible. So keep an eye on pi-supply.com for more info and the Kickstarter page at goo.gl/ftwFMh if you fancy lending a hand to such a worthwhile project.
Ideas
Aside from surveillance stations and media centres, we were trying to think up some other examples where PoE would greatly improve the Raspberry Pi and open up some other project ideas. So far we have:
• Wildlife monitor
• Weather station
• NAS server (with an attached USB drive)
• Home automation client/server
• Internet access machine
• Network file server
• Print server
The list goes on, but it would be interesting to hear what uses you think PoE for the Raspberry Pi would be. Let us know at the usual address.