Powering FONA 3G w/ LM317

Adafruit cellular platform - SMS and IoT over celluar

Moderators: adafruit_support_bill, adafruit

Please be positive and constructive with your questions and comments.
Locked
User avatar
surpugs
 
Posts: 1
Joined: Fri May 14, 2021 7:51 pm

Powering FONA 3G w/ LM317

Post by surpugs »

Before reading further: lipoly batteries were out of the question due to flight restrictions on batteries to rural areas where flying is the only option for travel. These are extraordinary conditions that normal people don't encounter. Still try to use the battery if possible.

It's possible to power the FONA 3G without a battery with an LM317 voltage regulator which can handle the 2A spikes. I highly recommend that the heat sink is also properly utilized. However, in order to get around the regulator's voltage drop, it needs to be powered by something larger than the 5V commonly used for microcontrollers. In our case, we used 9V from a wall wart that also powered the microcontroller plus peripheries. Everything has worked fine since 2017 for 50+ research devices.

User avatar
adafruit_support_mike
 
Posts: 67446
Joined: Thu Feb 11, 2010 2:51 pm

Re: Powering FONA 3G w/ LM317

Post by adafruit_support_mike »

Thanks for posting the information.

It does sound like you have a special case where using a LiPo is out of the question. Glad to hear you found a solution thast worked!

Locked
Please be positive and constructive with your questions and comments.

Return to “FONA”