What's the advantage of powering the Lilypad with 5 instead of 3.3 V? Solved!

Using Arduino General Electronics
1

Hi. Have a FTDI breakout board that can be jumpered from 5 to 3.3 V which I need for my Xbees.
Now if I use it for powering my Lilypad, do I need to put it back to 5 V again?

2

I thought the lilypad were very happily 3.3v devices so why change it?

3

Is your lilipad the updated one with the battery charging controller? If so, it will not work at 3.3v, but the ATmega328 will work fine.

4

The original lilypad is 8MHz (because 16MHz is not guaranteed to work at 3.3V). Powering it at 5V won't help that (unless you desolder the crystal/resonator), but would allow it to interface with 5V sensors/devices. Also 5V provides more overhead for driving blue and white LEDs (3.3V is a bit close to the limit).

5

Thanks. That helped.