I’m a recent migrant to the Elektron ecosystem — my Digitakt II and Digitone II have inspired me to make music since I got them. While they don’t replace my DAW or other hardware, they’re a great addition. I love that they can be self-contained, using either unit or both to completely sketch out a track. However, portability for Elektron systems makes them even more compelling. Like many creators I’d love to bring them with me on travel, or to an outside or unfamiliar location, where plugging into the wall isn’t feasible.
Elements of portability
The conventional way to accomplish this portability for Elektron boxes like the Digitakt II, Digitone II, their OG counterparts, and more is to combine a portable power bank (the kind you charge a phone or other device with over USB) and a step-up adapter. The adapter allows some portable power banks that support Power Delivery over USB (or PD) to negotiate a 12V connection to a device, instead of the 5V that is standard across most USB powered devices. Digitakt II and Digitone II draw about 1A of power, but need a bit more during initial startup so the power source must provide significantly more than 1A if you want to use them.
Many Elektron owners seem to gravitate toward the Ripcord for portability. However I recently found that the Adafruit 12V adapter (~$8 in the US, plus shipping) is available much more inexpensively than the Ripcord (~$25-30 in the US), and is center-positive as required on the Digi boxes.
Many more power banks nowadays support PD. Some may be as large as 50,000 mAh capacity or higher, which could theoretically power a Digi unit for a whole day. However, you can only take power banks under 27,000 mAh on most airlines, so beware. In any case, I found this INIU brand power bank, which has a 20,000 mAh capacity, and not one but two USB-C connections. It’s capable of delivering plenty of current over both connections — up to 3A each — to power these systems. While I’ll likely only use this with one Digi box at a time, it’s good to know that in a pinch it could do both.
Caveats and capacity
Most sources indicate that once the power bank drops to about 20-30% capacity, it may lack the current delivery needed for start up, or to maintain power. And power requirements will change depending on what the unit is doing — the more that’s going on, theoretically the more power it will likely draw. Even so, at worst this probably means a 20,000 mAh can likely power a Digi box for at least the usable length of a transatlantic flight, or most of a day spent in nature.
Hopefully this information will come in handy for other users seeking portability for Elektron units if I put it here (rather than searching out countless forums). Don’t wait, go create!