Hello and TIA!
I'm trying to power a wireless camera off of a battery pack. But in doing so I've found out that it goes through batteries pretty quickly and so I started learning about them. So I am trying to use rechargeable batteries but have need of reducing the voltage.
The camera takes 650 mA max at 5v.
The battery pack runs off of AA 1.2v batteries.
I picked up a 6v 1A voltage regulator.
I tried different ways of wiring it, and one or two ways work
... but the when it does work the VR gets really warm/hot and just sucks up battery power extremely fast negating having 8 1.2v batteries Vs. 4AA 1.5v batteries.
I have a drawing and some notes of what i've found out. So any help would be appreciated.
http://ghettobsd.org/misc/cam-circuit.jpg
Also I've read t hat having a capacitor isn't necessary, but helps in stabilizing the voltage. What kind of capacitor would I be able to use for this purpose?
When I originally picked up the voltage regulator it was all I could find, I've since then picked up a 5v 1A VR.
Although I didn't bring the notes with the readings I did take them with a multimeter and everything looked ok (correct voltage and decent mA's). The only other problem I saw though was a pretty big drop in mA. I would have though the VR would out put 1A since that was it's max (or close to it).
Thank you
##### Updated info 10/06 #####
These are pictures of the voltage regulators.
http://www.ghettobsd.org/misc/IMAGE_186.jpg
http://www.ghettobsd.org/misc/IMAGE_187.jpg
These are pictures of batteries.
http://www.ghettobsd.org/misc/IMAGE_189.jpg
The rechargeable batteries have the following output (at almost full capacity charge):
8 AA 1850 mAh nimh = 10.6 V
8 AA 1850 mAh nimh = 1.74 mA
4 AA 1850 mAh nimh = 5.25 V
4 AA 1850 mAh nimh = 660 mA