[gzalo]

I don't get the point of designing and building a 3.3 to 5v booster instead of just wiring a cable to one of the existing USB C vbus 5v pins? Am I missing something?

[russdill]

It's the safe thing to do. If you source power from some other place you have to worry about not accidentally back powering something by mistake. Granted, this can be accomplished just by carefully ruling out the possibility. Some people would rather just not risk making a mistake here

[breakingcups]

I'm not an electronics engineer, but is it safe to shift 3.3v to 5v if the underlying hardware wasn't designed for that? Is there a chance to put too much strain on the power source?

[user_7832]

If I understand right, the existing USB ports are only USB-C. I'm not sure of what implementation the Nano has but if it supports USB-PD it may be able to output up to 20V if the "main" connected device asks for it.

[gzalo]

Fair enough, if it supports being charged using any port that is reasonable. I would assume that the notebook has some other internal 5v regulator, maybe for the embedded controller or some other legacy device

[blamazon]

This solution is a clean one module plug and play solution, that seems to be the justification for not doing a kludgier hack like that.