Originally Posted by radensb

Things are progressing. I decided to make a change to the power supply design by adding a buck converter. The linear regulators were getting a bit too warm for my liking dropping the 14.5V down to 5V and 3.3V that the system uses. I figured that since this project could find its way into a car that bakes in the sun, I needed to minimize the heat generation from the parts that get warm as much heat as possible. The change should efficiently lower the 14.5V to ~6V and the linear regulators will condition the power down from there. Thermal tests resulted in them running about 5x cooler at the cost of only a few extra $$ in parts. Well worth it in my book from a reliability point of view! I have the parts on order to test this change and have already rolled it into the design:


I think this is the last thing that I will need to test before releasing V1.0!