Voltage regulator--how to mount?

[Adam Shapiro]

Originally Posted by JBotAlan

The more practical/serious use for this is stepping the 12v on the robot to 5v for my custom camera board. Again, I have no ideas as to how much this draws. I can pull out the meter and measure it, if need be.

Regulating 12V to 5V with that regulator and an unknown load might produce a good deal of heat. For that case you're going to want to have a good heat sink at least. Is it not possible to power it off the RC directly? If you're worried about it you could use a switching regulator for the same purpose. They're much more efficient and shouldn't get very hot at all.

Originally Posted by JBotAlan

Thanks (for taking me seriously after I said flat-out that I was mounting something in an Altoids tin...)

I actually had a friend who made an iPod charger out of an Altoids tin a number of years back. It worked pretty well, and always smelled curiously strong.

[MrForbes]

remember when ipods used to come with chargers? the one my wife got a couple years ago did, at least.

the charger has a jack for the firewire cable. the charger is rated 13 vDC at .62 amps

in case anyone was curious.

anyways, a chunk of sheet aluminum makes a dandy heatsink to put on a 7805 if needed.

[JBotAlan]

Originally Posted by Adam Shapiro

Is it not possible to power it off the RC directly?

I believe because of poor wording that this is not legal under the 2007 rules. However, this is irrelevent (until next year, anyhow) because there is no tech inspection at IRI...I'll just make sure I insulate it well.

I will measure the load of that camera board, possibly tonight, to see if it is going to work for my purposes.

And I'll probably go through with that curiously strong charger. I'm taking a look at MintyBoost to see what I can borrow (steal) from there.

JBot

[John Gutmann]

You can hot glue it.

Now before any body jumps at me, if it gets hot enough to melt the hotglue he has bigger problems then how he is mounting it. I have use a 7805 to regulate down form 9 volts to run a servo that had a big load on it. The regulator got now where nere hot. It got "warm" if you can call it that. it was barely enough for me to feel.

-John

[Dave Flowerday]

Originally Posted by JBotAlan

I believe because of poor wording that this is not legal under the 2007 rules.

It was legal in 2007:
http://forums.usfirst.org/showthread.php?t=1518

[JBotAlan]

Originally Posted by Dave Flowerday

It was legal in 2007:
http://forums.usfirst.org/showthread.php?t=1518

Oh, I know that I had a discussion for awhile during the season here on CD, but I didn't know there had been an official response. Thanks for the link.

JBot