Linear regulators produce a lot of heat when stepping down from a high voltage. Assuming the 5V load is drawing 200 mA and the battery voltage is 14V, 2.8W is drawn from the battery and only 1W is used by the load. The rest of the 1.8W is dissipated as heat in the regulator. That's quite a bit without a proper heat sink and sufficient air flow. This can't be avoided without using some type of switching regulator.
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Originally Posted by stevey_frac
Get yourself a 10 uF ceramic capacitor, and wire it from the power to the ground as close to the MPGuino as you can. That will go a long way towards removing any high frequency noise from the board.
The 5v regulator shouldn't be putting out much heat. The MPGuino can't be using that much power, and typically, small 5V regulators are at least 80% efficient. I would check really really closely for some kind of short? I honestly don't have any experience with the MPGuino, but i'm a computer engineer, and really hot components on this kind of thing sets off my 'something is wrong' alert system. Also, check for other warm components. Most chips these days can run very quickly and produce no discernible heat.
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