Tapping current from the voltage regulator of the Arduino Me

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lucs
 
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Joined: Tue May 28, 2013 12:42 pm

Tapping current from the voltage regulator of the Arduino Me

Post by lucs »

Hello,

Has anyone expercience with tapping of crurrent from the power regulator on the Aruino Mega board. According to the specs, this power regulator can deliver 800mA. I need 360mA to feed a LED strand of 9 leds (=9 x 60mA max). That would leave enough romm for the basic Arduino Mega functionalities. I would do this for a clean installation.

The powerr supply would come from the USB port or the power jack, I have the choice. What would you prefer? The specs of the power source are 5V with around 2700mAh.

Kind regards,
Luc

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adafruit_support_mike
 
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Joined: Thu Feb 11, 2010 2:51 pm

Re: Tapping current from the voltage regulator of the Arduin

Post by adafruit_support_mike »

You need a 7-12v power supply if you want to use the DC power jack. The regulator needs a couple volts of headroom to work. If you decide to do that, the 'Vin' pin from the 'POWER' header bypasses the 5v regulator and gives you a direct connection to the power supply.

If you power the Arduino from a USB cable, the '5v' pin will give you a connection to that supply.

For more information, you can look at the Mega specifications on the Arduino website under the 'Power' heading: http://arduino.cc/en/Main/arduinoBoardMega

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