Testing The Living Headlights app in a car

While choosing the hardware for our setup in a car, we must consider two questions:

• Can the car's outlets power the hardware?

• Can the hardware fit conveniently in the car?

A Raspberry Pi draws power via its micro USB port. It needs a 5V, 700mA power source. We can satisfy this power requirement by plugging a USB adapter into the car's cigarette lighter receptacle and then connecting it to the Raspberry Pi via a USB to micro USB cable, as seen in the following image:

Note

Normally, the cigarette lighter receptacle is a 12V power source, so it can power a variety of devices via an adapter. You could even power a chain of devices, and Raspberry Pi need not be the first device in the chain. Later in this section, we will discuss the example of Raspberry Pi drawing power from a 5V outlet on an HDMIPi display, which is in turn drawing power from a cigarette lighter receptacle via an adapter.

Standard USB peripherals, such as a webcam, mouse, and keyboard, can...