Arduino Uno power input - is 5 V at 1 A enough?

Question

I have a Arduino Uno board and phone power bank

Power bank details

• Capacity - 8000 mWh
• Input - DC 5 V and 1 A
• Output - DC 5 V and 1 A

Can I give the power to Arduino Uno using this power bank, through the Arduino Uno USB?

Answer 1

I dont see why not - YES you can!

I regularly use usb powerbanks to power projects for testing. so long as you dont ask for too much current (unlikely but project specific) you will be fine!

Answer 2

Short answer: Yes.

It depends on how you are feeding the power into the Uno and what you are trying to do with it.

My Unos use right at 0.35 amps, as measured by my USB volt/amp meter, until I begin adding things like DHT-22 temperature sensors and maybe a DS3231 RTC, then it will go up a bit. I can generally just run from USB power.

Feeding power via USB is not a long-term solution in general, since most other USB sources are current-limited to 500 mA. You could end up building a circuit that works fine on your power supply but not when running on just computer power.

Through testing using metered laboratory power supplies feeding into the barrel connector I am confident that 5V/1A is OK for light work.

And if you are POSITIVE that it is EXACTLY 5V then you can run it directly into the 5V pin and avoid the regulator, which drops the voltage some.
(Of course, without the regulator you put the board at risk.)

Note that If you are trying to run an anemometer you need 9-12V for power for it.

Also, if you want to run a 432 MHz serial radio you will likely need more than 1A to make them work since they need a couple of hundred milliwatts just for the radio. 1A might work, but USB power certainly will not - (they won't even try to work with just USB power).

In any case, it sounds like you are set up nicely to fire the thing up and start programming.

Have fun!