PowerBlock - Raspberry Pi Power Switch

PowerBlock – the safe power button/power switch for Raspberry Pi!

The PowerBlock is a soft power button add-on board for the Raspberry Pi. It allows safe shut down and allows you to conveniently turn on and turn off the power to the Raspberry Pi with a toggle or a momentary button.

Instead of just cutting the supply voltage with the risk of data loss the PowerBlock ensures a safe shutdown without the risk of any data losses that could occur otherwise.

Now compatible with Raspberry Pi 5 - please see this blog entry for info.

External power button

Any toggle or momentary button can be connected to the two button pins on the PowerBlock. The type of switch is automatically detected.

Status LED

The PowerBlock has pinouts for an optional status LED that indicates the power state of the Raspberry Pi. You can directly attach an LED to the pins that are marked with “LED”. You need to pay attention to the polarity of the LED: The LED pins are marked with “+” and “-” for that.

The LED will blink in four different patterns that depend on the power state of the Raspberry Pi:

1. Off: The LED is simply off.
2. Booting: The LED slowly fades in and out.
3. On: The LED constantly stays on.
4. Shutting down: The LED fades in and out twice as fast as during boot up

Signal breakouts for voltage and control signals

There are individual pinouts for the 5V input and output voltages, as well as for the control signals S1 (pin 12), and S2 (pin 11)

USB-C Compatible

The latest PowerBlock now features a USB-C power connection, so we have marked this product as compatible with the Raspberry Pi 4 and 5.

It can be used with other Raspberry Pis, however a Pi 4/5 USB-C power supply will be required.

2×6 pin female header

This header makes use of pins 1 to 12 of the GPIO header. The PCB is kept as small as possible so that you can easily access all other pins that are not used by the PowerBlock.

Resources

• Driver Installation
• Support forum
  

Specifications