It appears that the Pi’s USB ports provide 5V of power, which could charge a set of bluetooth earbuds or my phone, or whatever… But when outputting audio, is it detrimental to use those ports for charging? Does it cause noise/interference, etc…?
What about a little USB fan?
(FWIW, I’m using a HAT for audio out, not the USB ports.)
You’ll probably get many differing opinions, but I run Roon ROCK on a NUC and turned off or disabled all output modes and devices except for what I am using. My NUC does nothing but serve music. I have a Windows PC that I use for everything else, thus drive all extraneous devices off that and I also have a small powerstrip that has USB ports for charging, cost like $10.
yeah, i have a 4-port USB charger, and can use that for sure. Was just trying to reduce the number of things plugged into AC, but not a big deal.
Like your NUC, the Pi is only for serving music. I’m not sure how to (or if I can) disable unused ports on the Pi.
it was via the BIOS config, so if you can get to the BIOS setup you may be able to do some nice tuning over there.
I use my multi-port charger to power the Pi. So… reduce the number of bricks in your wall but instead of plugging stuff into the Pi just plug your Pi into the charger. I don’t know which version of the Pi you are running 3 and 4 all take 5v input. The amperage you’ll check by model and whatever other things you have plugged in to make sure your “charger” can supply enough to support your application. To be safe watch the Pi logs and look for low / under voltage warnings.