Delta_G:
You're right that the current through a divider doesn't change the voltage. But that isn't the situation you have. Part of your current is only going through one leg of your divider.Imagine your radio as just another load. Let's model it with a resistor. So now you have one resistor from hot and two resistors from it to ground. Your divider just got more complicated. Now imagine that resistor that models your radio is a variable resistor. As you change it you change the resistance on that half of the divider and thereby changing the voltage. You also have less resistance than you thought you had because of the way resistance adds. So you end up with too much voltage and blow your radio.
This comes up all the time as why can't I power an SD card from a voltage divider. It's all well known stuff. Use a divider to get some reference voltage or to cut a voltage down for an input (high impedance). But don't try to use a voltage divider to power a component cause you'll just blow it up.
That just blew my mind.
That is very good to know.
I have a question. So when using chips that require a certain voltage does that mean that I have to have a voltage regulator for every chip (i.e. using two nRF chips)?
- Yoseph