Quote:
Originally Posted by yash101
You really might want to invest in either getting a buck-boost voltage regulator or some sort of an (possible illegal. Al is the guru here) isolated capacitor bank to feed the reg when the voltage drops under 7.2 momentarily.
I, myself, would use a secondary "bridge converter". They is rated for 5v@1A, so it will directly work with your design. You also get the bonus that they have gone through quite rigorous testing in FRC, because every team uses one to power their communications. This would probably be your best bet if your team has any spare converters laying around! 
I power our team ODROID using a bridge converter. The voltage is quite stable and barely dropped bellow 4.98v and went over 5.03v when I tested it with a battery connected directly! |
Keep in mind that the 12v/5v bridge converter is a buck topology. It's connected to a 12V regulator on the PDU, so it won't drop out. You can't connect a custom circuit to that regulator, and I doubt that will change next year.
Personally I haven't seen our battery voltage drop below 8, but we also haven't been as aggressive with motors as other teams. If a system is consistently dropping that low, I would be worried about a bad cell in the battery.
The regulators our team will use next year are these:
http://www.pololu.com/product/2866 and they maintain a sub 1V drop out up to 5A.