I am designing my first "permanent" Arduino application, and I would like to know if the voltage regulator is linear or step down.
The reason I would like to know is because I am currently powering the prototype with an 11.1V 1300mAh LiPo battery. If it uses a linear regulator the efficiency would be, best case, 30% and 46% for the 3.3V and 5V regulators respectively.
I would much rather add my own step down converter to drop the voltage to 5V and power via USB port if that would be much more efficient.
I'm not sure if the different Arduino models have different parts or not, but for this application I am using an Arduino Leonardo.
Here is the schematic of the Leonardo.