GSM and motor shield power advice

Projects General Guidance
1

Hi,

I'm using the sparkfun GSM shield: https://www.sparkfun.com/products/9607.

It's currently working fine and I have a 5V power supply going into the 5V pin on the arduino as advised here: http://tronixstuff.wordpress.com/2011/01/19/tutorial-arduino-and-gsm-cellular-part-one/.

I now want to power my arduino with with 12V while also powering the arduino motor shield. The article above says not to plug 12V into the arduino jack socket. Could I instead put 12V into the Vin pin on the arduino? Would there be any problems with running the motor shield, GSM shield, and arduino from the same 12V power supply? My 12V power supply can supply 3A and my motors won't exceed that.

Thanks in advance!

2

The article above says not to plug 12V into the arduino jack socket.

No, it says not to try to run the 2 amps for the shield through the Arduino. Big difference.

You can connect 12V to the power jack, but you need to connect 5V to the cellular shield. Just recognize that you need two connections to the power supply, at different voltages. Or, you need to build a separate 5V regulator to drop the 12V to 5V for the shield.

The 5V regulator on the Arduino will not handle 2A.