Hello roboteers!
I’m hard at work on my tracked, one-armed, one-eyed robot SETH. (lynxmotion.net/viewtopic.php?f=20&t=7524 )
I’ve hit a small speed bump however. The camera I’m using, requires 3.3V, with a range from 3.27 to 3.33V. A bit impractical, so I’m building in the charging dock, which runs on 5V. (still waiting for what range it accepts) The current it draws is 420mA peak, and an average of 340mA in use. (so too heavy to run from botboard logic I think)
I have a 12V batt for the motors, and a 6V batt for the servo’s and logic. I’d love to, however, run the logic independently without having to use another battery (I’d prefer NO human interaction to keep the thing running) so I’d like to put in a voltage converter from the 12V battery to the logic, which accepts 5.5V to ~10V. I’d also like the camera to run off of the 12V batt.
So if I’m lucky, the dock accepts something above 5.5V, and then I can run both from that one voltage converter.
This had me wondering though- how do you all run your accessories, power-wise? All those camera’s, guns, doomsday devices and sensors must get their power from somewhere. So I’m wondering, how do those with vastly more experience than I handle it? Or am I the only one that worries about this and do you all just constantly swap out 5 different batteries every 20 minutes? 
Any advice on how to handle my current predicament?
Food for thought!
I’m always using some kind of LDO or SBEC to convert my li-po battery voltage to 5V.
A single board multiple voltage power management system is a lot to say, and do… It would involve switching regulators for efficiency which are difficult to design and build at the hobby level. I do see the need, but don’t have any useful advice to pass on.
I was merely curious to hear what the more experienced roboteers are chucking in their bots. An SBEC is a good idea, I might do that Bravach! I was looking at something like this:
uk.farnell.com/national-semicond … dp/9489851
and basically slap it together myself with a few components, but it looks like getting an SBEC like this is a better idea, thanks 
Something like this is what you ment, no?
hobbyking.com/hobbyking/stor … duct=10313
Robot dude: indeed! A lot of the people I’ve been talking to keep pointing me in the direction of the military, both for design and components. I have to keep reminding them it’s at a hobby level and that I don’t have the finances of an entire nation to pump into it
would be nice though… military grade components in Seth? Damn. Have you seen how those I-robot packbots perform? My little Seth would smash through walls and hunt down perpetrators with heatvision, AND dispose of the bodies, all on its own, AND fetch me my newspaper in the morning!
A quick update:
After some research I don’t think making a voltage converter yourself is a good idea. It’d be only marginally cheaper, but something that matters a bit more: it generates radio interference that could quite drastically mess up your electronics and/or reduce good radio reception range.
One can buy R/C BECs for decent prices and they’vebeen designed specifically to limit radio interference to a minimum.
Any advice on how to handle my current predicament?
Something like this is what you ment, no?