Im currently designing a small robot that uses 2 of these 12v motors, which are manage by the L298N motor controller board, and is being controlled overall by an arduino. Now I have come across an article(Scroll to bottom after clicking link for the schematic of what I am looking at) talking about powering the robot. It talks about using a switching regulator to stabilize the voltage going to the motors, but also has a disclaimer saying switching regulators uses about 1-2v. Now I am currently looking at this 12v li-ion battery.
So one of my question are, will I need to bump up to a 15v battery because of the voltage drop across the switching regulator?
I also want the battery to last as long as possible so efficiency is important. And when it comes to efficiency, then it seems like it would waste a lot of power to use a voltage regulator to drop the voltage to 9 volts for the arduino (which already has a regulator built in, but only up to 12v). I know with this at least I can add 9v battery for the arduino alone.
So overall, how do I maximize efficiency while ensuring the motors and arduino get the voltage they need