Powering Arduino's from a 12v source?

[AtomicGrog]

I have a fairly long driveway/plot (called a battleaxe in Aus) which I was thinking of putting sensor/repeaters devices down and switching the main 12v supply on/off when the sensors are triggered.

Along with that I was thinking that I could charge the sensor/repeater batteries when the 12v was on, all in all though it was getting pretty complicated.

Am now thinking that I could leave the 12v on most of the time and then powering both the arduino's and lights from it (lights would have relays to switch them on and off).

That would leave me with a requirement to produce 3.3v from the 12v supply.

Has anyone done this?

Am thinking of either purchasing a prebuilt device like this 12v Led Driver - EBAY or a building one using veroboard. Reality is the vero option would be more expensive...

Or is there a better option? something like leveraging the power regulator on the arduino to do the step down for example?

Or maybe even changing the main 12v supply to a 5v one and also changing the bulbs over to LED.

Cheers

Atomic

[blacey]

@AtomicGrog Checkout the voltage regulators in the store http://www.mysensors.org/store/#regulators. For example, the LE33ACZ can take up to 20V and drop it down to 3.3V.

[AtomicGrog]

Thanks,

Didn't spot those, mainly because they looked like 5v > 3.3v in the heading.

I'll maybe buy some of those plus find some of the 5V ones i see in the manufacturers spec sheet.