I have been working on a project lately and I recently used all my power pins on my arduino mega. My project is powered by a rechargable 9.6V 1600mah battery from RadioShack. I'm new to electronics and don't understand how to make two different power lines(for the lack of a better word) to power a few more components and also power the arduino at the same time. Do I take the positive lead and negative lead each with two wires coming out. If so how do I wire all the components without shorting the battery? I'm very new to electronics so I don't understand this very well. I know I may need a 5V voltage regulator to do so.
Parts Powered By Arduino:
5V Bluetooth Module
5V Ultrasonic Sensor
1 Servo
Parts I need to power by battery:
3 sparkfun QRE1113 analog line sensors I think with 5V
1 servo
A breadboard is what you need. Breadboards generally have connections running the full length of the board so you have plenty of VCC lines (and ground).
You can connect external devices separately to the power supply, but not if it is 9 volts. You might need to get a 5V power supply or else buy or make a 5V regulator circuit.
You can get a gadget which will take 9V and provide more 5V and also 3.3V and it will plug into the end of a breadboard.
Well that's a matter of current, and from what I've seen, battery suppliers are notoriously bad at saying how much current a battery can provide. They might give an indication mAh, which is a measure of energy (at least when you multiply by volts), but don't seem to give power, which is what amps tells you (when multiplied by volts.)
If you were using a wall-wart say, it would be simpler since those tell you the current they can supply, and you just need to add up the currents of your components and see if it's less than the supply....
See if you can find current supply figures for your make/s of battery though.....
As has been mentioned, it depends on the current used by the components. Arduinos usually have a 5V, 500mA regulator built in. This is typically enough for most non-mechanical projects. 500mA is enough to drive 20-25 typical LEDs at full brightness (assuming 20-25mA per LED).
This does not mean you could not have more LEDs in a project. You will notice some projects use 8x8 LED matricies (64 LEDs). These are usually driven by special driver ICs that can alternate LEDs on and off faster than then eye can detect.
Anyway, back to the main question. Notice I said "non-mechanical". According to your component list, your electronic parts are probably fine with regard to the Arduino's 5V regulator. Your servo is a different story.
Without seeing the datasheet for the servo, my low-ball estimate is 500mA max draw, but more likely 1A. The Arduino's regulator probably should not drive this (assuming it will even run at 5V). "should not" meaning it might work, sometimes, but you might red-line the regulator. The shield capable Arduinos usually have a resettable polyfuse that should prevent you from doing damage to your board.
If the servo requires more than the Arduino is capable of giving, you are likely to need some sort of external regulator and a MOSFET to drive it (the servo).
If you follow guides on the Internet, you should be relatively safe from catastrophic failure. Since you are driving an inductive load (the servo), I would make sure you read up on "flyback" diodes.
If you are concerned with how much current is being used, you can get a multi-meter with a built in ammeter mode and measure the current used in a circuit.
decep:
Without seeing the datasheet for the servo, my low-ball estimate is 500mA max draw, but more likely 1A.
Indeed - the datasheet should always be consulted, if available. I was recently reviewing some servos for use in a project, and their datasheets were indicating upwards of 4A at stall, and over an amp when loaded (but under 100 mA when idle - so that was nice).
So I guess what I am saying is that you can't use a "rule of thumb" - though usually for many lower cost servos (the ones I was looking at were metal geared, ball bearing and coreless - not cheap) budgeting 1 or 2A per servo will get you in the ballpark (still - read the datasheets if possible).
I'm new to electronics and don't understand how to make two different power lines(for the lack of a better word) to power a few more components and also power the arduino at the same time. Do I take the positive lead and negative lead each with two wires coming out.
I made a simple extra power header out of a Dip socket like below. Solder the socket legs on each side together, then wire one side to the 5v pin and the other side to the ground pin.