Powering Arduino Via VIN

Hey All,

I'm working on an Arduino breakout board shield that will plug into an Arduino and provide screw terminals for semi-permanent installations. One of the things I'm adding to it is a standard molex power connector for powering hard drives. It would be ideal if this could provide power to the Arduino.

From looking at the schematics, it seems i could route 12v from the power connector to VIN on the diecimilia. is this the right way to do it? any reasons why this wouldnt work? is there any way to make it compatible with the NG boards as well?

thanks!

I think that should work fine on both the Diecimila and NG. (Even though it might be labelled 9V on the NG, it's really VIN.) I'm not an electrical engineer, so I don't know if you need to worry about bypassing the diode that's on the built-in power supply. Maybe you want to put one on your shield?

thanks for the confirmation. i looked at the schematics and it seems that vin would work just fine. i guess i could easily test this out... which i'll do tomorrow in the lab. the connector is polarized, so a diode isnt really necessary. however, i think its a good idea just to be safe, since vin is after the diode on the Arduino itself.

cheers!
Zach