Now... If you'll take a little time to look at the instructions on building the kit, you'll see the breadboard becomes a jumbled mess... Not stating anything badly about the Project Manager at Jameco... Just stating the truth.
What I have tried to do is clean up the breadboard by incorporating the decoupling capacitors directly on each voltage regulator, and include a small LED on the output side of each regulator to indicate the regulators are working. My thought was to create plug-and-play regulators for breadboard applications. Please see photos at: http://grpace.net/arduino/photos/breadboard/. There are front, back and top views of the breadboard layout.
I'm plugging a 9volt battery into the input/ground of the 7805. Metering the battery shows 8.6 volts. The issue I'm having is that I cannot get a solid, steady 5volt from the 7805. On the breadboard, the 3.3volt regulator is chained off the output of the 7805, which makes it unstable as well.
Again... being fairly new to this stuff, I would greatly appreciate any input on this. To me, it seems that it should work, but I may very well be wrong.
I'm not an expert, but I was watching some videos in YouTube, and I saw they always setup the voltage regulators like this:
For what I can see in your breadboard, you using same type of capacitor for input and output.
The image isn't clear enough, I mean, it's a great photo, but as far as I can see, on the voltage regulator with the yellow led, you have 1 leg of each capacitor, on the left leg of the voltage regulator (is that ground there, or the leg in the middle is ground) at least in the 7805 I have the ground is the middle leg, but perhaps that one is different.
I think, if you make an schematic of what you connected and how you connected, there will be in the forum a lot of people that will be able to tell you if you doing something wrong or not
The regulator with the yellow LED is the 3.3 volt regulator. The caps on it are what the bare bones instructions from Jameco puts in the kit. And, yes, the pin-out is different on those regulators compared to the 7805s. I have taken care to try to make sure I connected everything correctly, and at the same time, clean up that breadboard.
To further elaborate...
The caps on each voltage regulator are what came with the kit from Jameco. 10uF caps on the 7805 and 10uF on the LM1117T-3.3. I still don't undesrtand why they are 2 different types of capacitors.
Disconnect everything from the 7805 till you get it right.
[With the leads pointing down, looking at the labelled face, they're In-Gnd-Out, and the tab is Gnd.]
I think the Negative terminal of each cap should go into the "-" bus. The positive terminal of one should go to the Input and the other's should go to the Output. (Maybe none at all on the output vs the 10uF supplied?)
I guess they have the Out connected to the "+" bus.
Thank You, Runaway Pancake for your input on this matter.
I didn't like their setup, either. Their breadboard is a jumbled mess.
I can somewhat agree that the LEDs in the heat sink may not be good form... However my thoughts were to do it that way as a plug-and-play use for quick-and dirty breadboard testing... Not for long-term use.
I think the Negative terminal of each cap should go into the "-" bus. The positive terminal of one should go to the Input and the other's should go to the Output. (Maybe none at all on the output vs the 10uF supplied?)
I have ensured they are setup this way. A careful look at the photos should show this.
I guess they have the Out connected to the "+" bus.
Based on what I can see from their breadboard setup, I don't see that as true. And based on my breadboard setup, I don't think I made that mistake.
I'm wondering if it's not bad regulators to begin with.
And again...
Going back to the initial question...
Is there anything technically wrong with setting up the voltage regulators this way for short-term breadboard use ??
