It actually has to be between 7v and ~25v I think. 7 - 12v recommended.
The actual chip requires 5v but the voltage regulator provides that from the higher voltage input.
I use a adjustable voltage 1A power pack set to 9v and it works rather well.
"The use of a DC-DC convertor, allowing the board to be powered with a minimum of 1.2 V, but with a maximum of 5.5 V. Higher voltages or reversed polarity in the power supply will kill the board."
Some of the documentation leaves much to the imagination, shouldn't it read:-
"The use of a DC-DC convertor, allowing the board to be powered with a minimum of 7 V, up to maximum of 12 V. Higher voltages or reversed polarity in the power supply will kill the board."
Well, it says: "Higher voltages or reversed polarity in the power supply will kill the board." I wouldn't take the risk. If you look at the datasheet of the voltage regulator you can see that 5.5 V is the maximum.
Cheater, I don't know why you think it is between 7-12 V. Did you come to this conclusion before you had a multimeter? Do you know the question is about the bluetooth arduino?
I powered it with 2 AA battery's, with a GPS module attached to it and took the 3.3V from the BT module to feed a dataflash chip. Works perfect. Except that the battery's didn't last very long. The GPS was a bit too much I think.
Cheater, I don't know why you think it is between 7-12 V. Did you come to this conclusion before you had a multimeter? Do you know the question is about the bluetooth arduino?
I assumed too much.
You learn something new every day.
No worries, I would have started at the bottom anyway, and I don't plan to touch it until more BT owners have told me what they use as a power source, there must be more than the 3 of us, I know Daniel's got lots of them stashed under his bed - what are you plugging them into Daniel???
What the heck, I'll start with 3 AA's (a whopping 4.5v!) and say hello
What do you want to power with it John? For me the 2 rechargable AA's lasted only a few hours. I think the efficiency of the DC converter wasn't very with good the GPS attached to it. But I didn't bother to measure the current draw over time with or without the GPS.
I am using the BT arduino now for a temperature logger. I don't know yet how I will power it. If I can find a suitable adaptor then I will use it, otherwise it is going to be 2 AA's again. Now there is only an LCD display attached to it so I expect that the batteries will last a bit longer.
I think the Li-ion 5VDC lasts forever and is good for 500 cycles, it's not big either so it would make a nice companion ... but, I'm a little wary of the BT, so I was hoping to get a sample of what other people are using.
The 2 AA's worked fine, I guess I could juice up the NG and get it doing the heavy work and use the BT as a comms middleman, but if I can stack it with the Li-ion then there wouldn't be the need for a double up.
I need to power a couple of small relays, read several inputs and an rfid on demand, the rfid needs at least 5v, so I've got a couple of options but I'd prefer to go with the one that requires the least number of boards