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Logic Power Inputs
There are different ways of providing logic power to your board.
Your board needs two sorts of power to work: 12-24V power to turn motors, heat hotends, etc., and 5V (or “logic”) power to power the microcontroller (the brain).
There are three ways to provide 5V power to the board:
- By plugging a USB cable in, USB cables provide 5V
- By soldering a voltage regulator to the board (and providing 12+24V, which the voltage regulator then turns into 5V)
- By providing 5V directly to the 5V power input (next to the VBB power input)
If you want to keep it simple, the easiest solution is just to connect your Smoothieboard to your computer via USB.
Note you can connect several different power supplies at the same time, with no issue at all. Smoothieboard has diodes on-board that will simply get the power from the one with the highest voltage, meaning you can even turn one off and the other will be used without a reset.
If voltage and current are strange concepts to you, it’s probably a good idea before you continue setting up your board, that you read this introduction.
The board’s logic circuits (5V line) typically consume up to 500mA current (what is standard for a USB port).