Power Arduino DUE board from 3 AA batteries: suggestions ?

Hello all,

I just ordered my first DUE board to play around with. I'm wondering what the best way would be to power the board from 2 or 3 AA batteries. My atmega328 chips are powered by a DC booster feeding of 3 AA's. With the DUE I have to use the entire board, so would you recommend to power it through the 3.3 V ? The 5V ? It seems like an overkill to boost 3 AA batteries to 9 V just to see the DUE board take it down to 3.3 V again...

Cheers,

Jack

First of all not everything on the due runs at 3.3 V. The USB chips require 5V
You can power the due directly off the USB port. But don't expect it to run a display or a lot of other gear.
You can run the due office 6v battery pack, But it requires for batteries minimal.
The regulators will accept that voltage, But it is a little close to the regulated output for me.
It is best to use a 7.5V battery pack or 9V Regulated power supply that can handle at least 1 amp.
The problem with battery packs is they rundown. And you have to replace the batteries.. This is fine
for a project that does not have access to any other power source. But if you have access to a power source,
you're better off using a 9V Regulated power supply.

Hope this helps.
Joe.

Thanks for your input. I am considering using the DUE board for a mobile project, so it would have to run off batteries, preferably 3xAA, since I have a large stash of those.

This regulator could supply 5V while depleting the batteries all the way down to 0.3V.
Pololu 5V Step-Up Voltage Regulator U1V10F5

EDIT: Note that it is difficult if not impractical to take advantage of some of the low power features available on the SAM3X because of not being able to shut down other hardware on the DUE board. I'm not sure what is the lowest current draw others have been able to achieve.

Thanks, it's a nice piece of work. At the moment I use a step up booster, converting 3 AA's to 5V.

So, basically you advice to get a 5V source connected to the board. Should it be connected through the 5V pin then ?

The system doesn't have to run extreme low power, whatever it will draw, it will not be very much compared to all peripherals (leds, speaker, etc).

Cheers,

Jack

CaptainJack:
Hello all,

I just ordered my first DUE board to play around with. I'm wondering what the best way would be to power the board from 2 or 3 AA batteries.

NiZn rechargables are 1.6--1.7V per cell, so 3 will do 5V.

So, basically you advice to get a 5V source connected to the board. Should it be connected through the 5V pin then ?

Haven't tried battery power yet ... after looking at the schematic, if powered with 5V through either USB connector, you could take advantage of the PTC resettable fuse protection.

So one option would be to make my own USB cable, but just with power lines in it. However... I would like my project to run of batteries, but also to connect it to a computer when I want to field update it, without disconnecting the batteries (because all peripherals need power as well). It seems like a bad idea to connect power to one USB port, and use the other for programming...

Since no one has answered your question, I thought I would give it a shot.
According to the schematics, each USB power line is isolated with A MOS FET.
The voltage used will be the higher of the two voltages. No feedback
should occur.

Hope this helps.

I'd say best bet for any battery powered Arduino project would be a portable usb charger (the types used for charging phones). That way you're not wasting power using the arduino's voltage regulator. Also as they are often designed to charge two devices at once they can generally deal with a good couple of amps draw.