labelwhore
Participant
Post count: 526

Power output on the Pi’s USB ports is limited by software AND hardware.

There is a hardware hack that might be able to get this to work. It also could brick your pi. At ~$35 though, I think it’s worth experimenting.

I’ve never actually done thins, but am considering it for another project. If anyone goes through with it, please let us know it it works.

from that article a key piece of info:

There is a reason the Raspberry Pi foundation set the current limiting of the USB ports so low. The Pi was originally intended to run off of a micro USB phone charger. There aren’t many phone chargers out there that will supply more than 1A, and the CPU and related peripherals will take half of that. If you’re going to change the /boot/config.txt file, you’re going to need a beefy power supply. Increasing the current limiting of the USB ports to 2A will require an even bigger, beefier supply.

Given that, you may need to make some more power mods to your pi, such as modding it so that you can use a standard wallwart type power supply (the type with a with a barrel plug). That would open up your options in terms of the power supply itself.