Part of a circuit I'm designing needs to control servo motors rated for 5V. I've measured that they can draw over 1A when active.
The issue is that my circuit is powered by a 2-cell LiPo battery, which I've gathered has a 6V minimum, 8.4V maximum output.
Another part of the circuit uses 3.3V, so I used a switching regulator from 6-to-28V down to 3.3V, and it works perfectly. I thought that a similar component to regulate down to 5V would be about as expensive ($2-$3 ish), but I'm finding on DigiKey that I'm looking at at least $16 per regulator for even a 1A-output 5V regulator, and significantly more for a 2A output.
This is really way too expensive for me, especially since I will have 4+ servos to power. Is there a better way to power servos from a 2-cell LiPo? I would really like to power everything off of one battery, but it seems like I may just need to power the servos with a separate 5V battery (NiCd or other, not sure).
Edit: My search parameters earlier somehow caused me to miss the LM2596, for $2.5. Will this work how I want, if I adjust it to have a 5V output? It seems a little too cheap to be true. :)
Datasheet: http://www.onsemi.com/pub/Collateral/LM2596-D.PDF