RC Car and batteries

[j0npae]

I just finished my first year in college and took mostly programming classes, so when it comes to electronics, I am completely lost. I'm going to use an Arduino Uno for this plastic RC car that has 5 AA battery slots. If I wanted let's say ~12V instead of 7.5V, what are my options? I have a battery pack that holds 6 AAA. I thought of connecting them in series, but I somewhat understand why that isn't a great idea. In addition to my options, I want to know when it is okay to hook up batteries in series/parallel. For example, would it be okay to hook up one more battery in a series?

Thanks in advance!

 

[CocaCola]

With AA the best you are going to do with 5 is about 8 volts on fresh batteries...

Look at the '14500' Lithium battery cells they are nearly the same size as AA and in many cases depending on the manufacture will actually fit AA holders... They are 3.7 volts a cell, so only using 4 of them will get you about 14.8 volts or 3 will get you 11.1...

Make sure you get the proper charger for the 14500 cells!

And last but not least the Arduino will run on 7.5 - 8 volts just fine...

 

[j0npae]

Thanks CocaCola for the fast reply!

 

[j0npae]

Another question came up in my mind. If I were to pack 5 of those inside the RC Car... How long can the car run before potentially damaging the Arduino's IC? It would be ~18-20 volts. I'm just worried about overheating.

 

[CocaCola]

Another question came up in my mind. If I were to pack 5 of those inside the RC Car... How long can the car run before potentially damaging the Arduino's IC? It would be ~18-20 volts. I'm just worried about overheating.

That would depend on the regulator that is on your Arduino board (way to many Asian knock offs and copies out to even guess anymore) and I don't know if even the authentic ones have been consistent over the builds... I believe most Arduinos are spec'd to run at 7-12v normal and most claim a max of 20v... I suspect anything over 12v is going to really tax the regulator and require a heat sink or regulator upgrade to not overheat and shut down or fail...

 

[j0npae]

So I have one of those 3.6v batteries left and I was wondering if its okay to use an Ultrafire lithium ion battery for a very low-draining project that involves LEDs. I was planning to connect the small project on a timer. I'm not sure how the chemistry of batteries work but is there a clear-cut preference for different uses when dealing with alkaline vs lithium?