Powering M6E Nano hooked up to Arduino via header pins

Components & Accessories Power
1

Hi.

I am currently working on a project that involves powering the M6E NANO soldered to an Arduino UNO. We have a 12 V battery source and were wondering if we could hook this up directly to the soldered RFID Reader and Arduino. The Arduino can take 12 V, but the RFID reader says a max of 5.5 V can be used, so do we need to use a voltage divider or regulator? Thank you

2

5.5V is the absolute MAXIMUM for the M6E Nano else you will damage the hardware. The M6E will take 5V power from the UNO, but as it he M6E is very sensitive to enough power, you should not increase the the read or write power above 500.

3

So can we hook the positive side of the battery to the soldered Arduino and M6E Nano to the Vin input?

4

I don’t fully understand your planned setup, but some background for you to make your decision.

The input voltage on the separate power connector on an UNO can be max 20V (7 - 12V is normal). Through a diode, it is then connected to the VIN pin and the onboard 5V /1A power regulator. The output 5V then fed to the Nano M6E as well. The Nano is not connected to the VIN. The VIN pin is just a small pin… watch out it does not get overloaded with too much current flowing through it.

Mind you the UNO onboard power regulator can do 5V/1A max. The Nano power consumption can be 900mA at 5V (at 27 dBm) BUT it always needs its power in bursts (power for reading/writing is only “on” for a short time). That can be handled with a strong capacitor on the power line, which the Uno (nor any other board) does not have. Hence connecting an external 5V power supply to the Nano M6E 3.7V - 5.5V pins directly with enough power to handle “bursts”, like a LIPO battery, will increase the stability.

5

We have the M6E Nano soldered to the Arduino Uno via header pins. We have a AA battery holder that holds 8 batteries (12 V). We were going to wire the positive terminal of this battery holder directly to Vin, but it seemed the Vin on the Arduino was not physical connected to the RFID reader. We did not know if we needed to use a voltage regulator or whether we could just wire this to the UNO, and if the 5 V pin on the Arduino would power the M6E Nano.