Arduino - 5 Ways to Power Up your Arduino

This blog post will give you show you 5 different ways that you can power your Arduino board.

5 Ways to Power Up your Arduino

USB: that’s probably the most common way people try their projects. By simply plugin your Arduino board into your computer through an USB cable it will power up your Arduino.

Batteries: You can use two different types of batteries:

Disposable batteries: One of the most common ways is to power up an Arduino with a 9V battery, just like the image below shows. Keep in mind that those batteries are a bit limited, so your Arduino won’t be able to supply many sensors or motors.

Re-charged batteries: Those are simply battery cells that you can recharge. Are a great solution for robotics.

Wall-Warts ( those supplies simple produce low DC voltages from high AC voltages): You must be careful when you’re using a wall-wart because sometimes they produce much more voltage than the actually power supply says in the label. And the voltage regulator on your Arduino won’t be able to handle so much voltage.

Solar Panel: When It comes to choose a solar panel to power up your Arduino Projects you must be careful. Photo voltaic solar panels comes in different sizes, prices and some my give you a higher voltage or a higher current. So before you choose one, keep in mind what’s your project for and what it needs.

Where to get all those power supplies from? I choose amazon.com.

Arduino Kit with USB Cable – Click here
Duracell Coppertop 9-V Alkaline Batteries – Click here
Power Plug Adapter for Arduino UNO R3 Mega 2560 1280 – Click here
OSEPP Monocrystalline Solar Cell – Click here

I hope this help you find a new way to power up your Arduino!

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P.S. You can get all those parts and much more on Amazon. Click here to get parts.

5 thoughts on “Arduino – 5 Ways to Power Up your Arduino”

Another alternative, to the wall-wart, is a re-used PC Power supply.
Though, I go a little further.. I have a pair of supplies.. 1, a 400-Watt, the other, a 250-Watt. The 250-Watt, required adding a load to the +5V to keep it going, whiole the 400-watt had a built-in 33-Ohm, 5-Watt resistor soldered to the board inside, between the +5V & GND. (NOT the +5Vsb.) I’ve pulled a couple of 7809 regulators from a couple of antiquated (reads 16 or 8-Bit ISA) sound cards. I also use a power plug from a dead 3.5″ floppy drive, and a barrel connector with two 6″ jumpers sacrificed. This way, plug the floppy plug into 4 adjacent pins on the breadboard, plug a ‘still-connected’ power cable from the supply onto it, then running jumpers from +12V (Yellow) to V-In of the 7809, a jumper from GND to GND on the regulator, then plugging the GND wire from the barrel plug to the same GND pin of the regulator, and the +V wire to the V-Out from the regulator. It also gives you an external +5V, & +12V for projects that need to voltage stronger than the Arduino can put out. (I.E. stepper motors, relays, servos which would normally overload the +5V from the arduino.)

Rui Santos

January 7, 2014 at 5:06 pm

Hi Stephen,
Thanks so much for sharing your knowledge!
That’s a great way to use our PC power supplies that we always have around.
I already thought about making one for me a few times before.
As soon as I have some free time I’ll make one.

Have a nice day,
Rui
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