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Using The 3.3V Supply For The Usb Camera

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Hey DJ, I am building a WALL-E and I am installing the camera. I am trying to do it cleanly, but its tight without hacking up a ton of plastic (with the usb connector out the back).

I read in the camera thread that you used the usb cable modded and routed that for the power and signal. Someone else ran the 5V directly to the card and removed the battery. You mentioned that the components on the camera are typically 3.3V and may not survive well at 5V. I wanted to know 2 things..

  1. Can I do this mod but run the ground and signal wires to DXX and the 3.3V supply from the pin on the side of the card? Does this functionally work?
  2. Will this brownout your 3.3V supply?

I don't know if these are dumb questions - I am a mechanical engineer lol... I am trying to broaden my understanding in this project. Thanks!


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United Kingdom
#1  

Hi there I removed my battery and powered the Camera from an EZ-Robot servo port. I can't see any reason why you couldn't take the power from the 3.3v on the EZ-B V3. I wasn't completely convinced though that the camera is supplied by 3.3v and not 5volts my camera came with a 5 volt supply to the mini USB on the back.

Perhaps someone could measure the voltage across the camera battery then we would know perhaps DJ has the specs?

#2  

Hey winstn60, I saw your post and that's how I got the idea. Have you had any reliability issues at all? how long have you run it that way? I think the standard for usb is indeed 5V, and it must be stepped down slightly for the battery. The rework you have done is bypassing straight to the battery which floats up to 3.7/4.2 for a LiPo. I would assume a 5V should be ok because you are not much over what I think is a 4.2V max.

Again, I am not an electronics guy yet lol so this may be founded on a lot of assumptions..

#3  

Hi Winstn, Here is the camera voltage see 10/20/2011 at 7:50 AM. A read of the entire thing may also be helpful. P.S. thanks for all you help in the past. Greeting from the Bookmaker and Buster

United Kingdom
#4  

Hello guys I 've been running the camera this way from the beginning when there were only 5 people on the EZ-B facebook page. Its absolutely fine if you were at all concerned you could put a diode in series with the supply to drop the 5 volts by 0.7. Looks like the camera is nominally 3.3v

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