Travel tip: A tip to set up your Raspberry Pi in your motel room

I am writing this post from a motel in the Mammoth Lakes area, California. Have you ever been in a situation where you had to verify something on a Raspberry Pi for a presentation/interview sitting in a motel room? As soon as I walked into my motel room today, I noticed these (shown in the picture below) TV input ports on the wall.

TV input ports

It occurred to me that it is possible to power a Raspberry Pi using the USB port (+ micro USB cable), use the TV as a monitor for the Raspberry Pi (via HDMI).Given the Raspberry Pi B+,A+ (and the Raspberry Pi 2)’s low power consumption, this should work like a charm.

In order to conduct such experiments, the following would be needed:

1. Raspberry Pi (A+,B+ or the v2)
2. Keyboard
3. MicroB USB cable
4. HDMI cable

Since the total current draw from the TV USB port is limited to 500mA,it might not be possible to connect a wireless adapter to connect to the internet(+some motels charge USD 4.99 per device for WiFi use).

Have you ever tried something like this before? Let us know. I plan to test this on my next road trip and share my observations.