# Powering led strip lights with power bank

**URL:** <https://community.sparkfun.com/t/powering-led-strip-lights-with-power-bank/39334>\
**Category:** LEDs\
**Created:** [April 12, 2020, 7:44am UTC](https://community.sparkfun.com/t/powering-led-strip-lights-with-power-bank/39334 "2020-04-12T07:44:23Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![zarathustra](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/898d66/32.png) [@zarathustra](https://community.sparkfun.com/u/zarathustra)\
**Post date:** [April 12, 2020, 7:44am UTC](https://community.sparkfun.com/t/powering-led-strip-lights-with-power-bank/39334/1 "2020-04-12T07:44:23Z")

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Hi guys 🙂

I want to add light in my backpack and thought I can use my power bank ANKER PowerCore II 10000 with the following specifications

- Input: 5V⎓2A, 9V⎓2A (Compatible with Quick Charge / AFC / PowerIQ 2.0)
  
- Output: 5V⎓3A, 9V⎓2A, 12V⎓1.5A (PowerIQ 2.0)
  
Also i bought a usb cable, which i cut and connect it(black-black red-red, but also tried black-red) to led strip lights with the following specifications:  
- Power - 14.4Watt/m
  
- 12 V DC
  
- 400mA
  
but it doesn’t worked. What could be the problem? Cause it seems that the battery should work with that led lights, also seems that it will work for a long time until i need to charge it again 😃 If I miss something/doing it wrong or just could make it better, could you please correct me?

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**Author:** ![n1ist](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/5daacb/32.png) [@n1ist](https://community.sparkfun.com/u/n1ist)\
**Post date:** [April 12, 2020, 3:22pm UTC](https://community.sparkfun.com/t/powering-led-strip-lights-with-power-bank/39334/2 "2020-04-12T15:22:49Z")

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My guess is the power bank needs to communicate with the load in order to select anything other than 5V 500mA. Likely done with the USB C protocol. In that case, something like [https://www.sparkfun.com/products/15801](https://www.sparkfun.com/products/15801) and a small micro to configure it would switch the bank to 12v output

/mike

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**Author:** ![brow](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/sparkfun/user_avatar/community.sparkfun.com/brow/32/6116_2.png) [@brow](https://community.sparkfun.com/u/brow)\
**Post date:** [April 13, 2020, 1:46pm UTC](https://community.sparkfun.com/t/powering-led-strip-lights-with-power-bank/39334/3 "2020-04-13T13:46:46Z")

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How do you ‘tell’ the bank to output 12 instead of 5 VDC? My guess is that there are certain fast charging protocols at the higher voltages but that they remain disabled until some sort of digital handshake occurs over USB.

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**Author:** ![zarathustra](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/898d66/32.png) [@zarathustra](https://community.sparkfun.com/u/zarathustra)\
**Post date:** [April 14, 2020, 12:39pm UTC](https://community.sparkfun.com/t/powering-led-strip-lights-with-power-bank/39334/4 "2020-04-14T12:39:33Z")

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n1ist good suggestion, think I could use something like boost converter :roll:

brow, could be, I’ll need to read about it, cause if it supports it out of the box, should be more easy.