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Is a voltage regulator the solution?

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Monegaskeren

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Hello.
My friend has a problem with a project he is making.

He is making a useless box - the kind where you filp a switch and the lid opens and a furry arm reaches out at switches the swich off again.
The box is powered by ordinary batteries and the arm is moved by a servo. To control the movements he uses an arduino board.

After a relatively short period of time the arm moves slower and soon the moving parts are out of sync.

Do you have any ideas to how he can fix this?
I have read a bit about voltage regulators and is wondering if adding one could be the solution?

I am sorry for my bad english. English is not my native language.

Regards Johnny.
 

Monegaskeren said:
Hello.
My friend has a problem with a project he is making.

He is making a useless box - the kind where you filp a switch and the lid opens and a furry arm reaches out at switches the swich off again.
The box is powered by ordinary batteries and the arm is moved by a servo. To control the movements he uses an arduino board.

After a relatively short period of time the arm moves slower and soon the moving parts are out of sync.

Do you have any ideas to how he can fix this?
I have read a bit about voltage regulators and is wondering if adding one could be the solution?

I am sorry for my bad english. English is not my native language.

Regards Johnny.
Click to expand...

Your problem is not voltage regulator. your problem is servo motors. It drains a lot of Current. what type of batteries are you using.
 

Hi and thank you for your answer.
As far as I remember I think he uses alkaline batteries like type AA or something like that.
Do you have any other suggestions?
 

Simply measure the battery voltage when the thing is operating. If the voltage drops then the battery is too old or is too small. Be aware that some large D size alkaline cells have a little low power AA cell inside.
A Li-PO battery is a very powerful rechargeable battery that is available at a hobby store. A charger made for it should be used. You need to know the current the "thing" uses to calculate how long a charge will last.
 

Monegaskeren said:
Hi and thank you for your answer.
As far as I remember I think he uses alkaline batteries like type AA or something like that.
Do you have any other suggestions?
Click to expand...

Not knowing how many he uses, Let say he has 4 in series. That starts out at about 6.2 Volts, runs fast. After several uses, it drops to 4 Volts and runs slower.

You could put a simple 5 volt reg (LDO) which would deliver a constant 5 volts, so long as the battery voltage was above 5.5 volts. then it would start to drop and it would be slow again.
So one more trick, add more batteries in series. so now you have say 8 batteries. which start out at 9.3 volts. the regulator would put out a constant 5 volts for a much longer time. The device would run at a constant speed.
 

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