Discharge profile of a SLA battery/5V LDO

I'm starting to work on designing a power supply system for my rover. I've chosen to provide two batteries, one for logic and one for motors.

On the logic side, it seems like the best way to provide +5V for a number of circuits is to use a 5V LDO (I'm not smart enough to build a switching regulator). I don't know my current requirements, but I expect that 200-300ma would give me enough headroom to grow the design as needed. I was looking at an LDO like the following:

Max 667

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The max dropout voltage is 350mV, so as long as my battery is at 5.4V or more I should be fine, right? So my question is, is there any indication how much juice a battery will have left when its at 5.4V? I was thinking about using a 6V SLA, in the range of 2-2.5maH. But if a 6V SLA is going to drop out when it still has, say 33% charge left, then maybe I should move up to 8V?

Does this make more sense than just using a 5V SLA, or can most TTL and CMOS chips handle the the varying voltage as the battery discharges? I'm thinking specifically of a couple of small AVRs and a few supporting ICs.

I should add that I was planning on using a 6V SLA to power the servos and drive motor. I know 6V is on the high end of a servo's tolerance but should be okay, right? Even if the battery is at 6.4V after being freshly charged? I picked 6V because of the increased speed and torque. It seems to me that having two identical batteries would simplify the charger circuit, is that true?

Also, I had a nutty idea. If I have two identical batteries and one is draining faster (i.e. the motors), what if I monitor the cell charge with an AVR, and then switch the batteries when one is nearing depletion, so that the one that is low runs the logic (lower current consumption) and the one with more charge left runs the motors. Is this a crazy idea or has anybody actually seen this used before?

Sorry for the excessive number of questions, it's 7 AM here and I'm a little delirious still.

Reply to
Mark Haase
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Hmm...

After more researching I found this:

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A charge profile is shown on page 1. It seems to indicate that a 6V SLA battery with 6V across its terminal is at 20% charge remaining. 100% charge is 6.45 V.

Reply to
Mark Haase

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