Controlling Sharp Lidar and voltage booster

How you would hook up and control a 5v booster and lidar (the Sharp one that comes in the Electron sensor kit) in such a way that in between readings the voltage booster is cut off?
(This application has no USB attached, it is powered through the (LiPo) battery only - but in the future I wish to add a solar panel to charge the LiPo ).

                   5V booster       SHARP Lidar
    electron   --> terminals  -->   wire #/color   --> electron         
 -------------------------------------------------------------------
    3V3 ------------ Vin              
    gnd ------------ gnd               
    gnd ------------ gnd   
                     Vout(5v) ------- 2/red (Vcc)
                                  |
                                  ---- 3/red (Vcc)
                                
                                    1/black (gnd) -------- gnd
                                    5/black (gnd) -------- gnd
                                    4/white(signal out)--- A0

which I think will leave the booster on all the time.

If you don’t want the step-up converter to be on all the time, you either need to control the input power via a transistor attached to a free GPIO pin or you use a step-up converter with a dedicated enable/sleep pin and control that via a free GPIO.

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That was a clear answer. Thank you!

I’ll investigate both. And post my findings here for the next guy that is trying to get a controlled 5V booster.

You want a DC to DC regulator that has an Enable pin to allow the Photon to control when the DC regulator is turn ON and OFF so you can only turn it ON when you need it.

Great recommendation

This one should do it…

Your better off with this one since it has a Shutdown pin that you can control with the Photon to turn it off when your not using it. The other unit would consume 1mA of power constantly when your not using it.

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I was a few clicks away from ordering the other one…
Jeter is retired so you can be Mr. Clutch now. :hourglass:

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