Powering a Pi Zero (2) from your laptop

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November 12th, 2021

The new quad-core Pi Zero 2 has a lot more horsepower than the original Zero and as a consequence it does require more power than the original Zero.

But that doesn’t necessarily means that you cannot power it from an USB port from your laptop.

Can you still power a Raspberry Pi Zero from an USB port of a laptop?

Let’s try. Be reminded all Pi’s are cleverly designed to throttle down, when they experience a power shortage.

To check if your Pi has throttled down:

> vcgencmd get_throttled
throttled=0x0

If you see some other output then 0x0 yes then you’ve had power problems. Otherwise you’re OK.

For the moment, running Raspberry Pi OS Bullseye on a Raspberry Pi Zero 2 powered form an USB port doesn’t show problems by just installing programs and updating the OS.

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