It''s hot as hell in here

Archiver

Oh great ones,

I am struggling with heat issues in one of my projects. Several people
have offered solutions, but the problem really boils down to this:

I have a 12v LCD screen being powered by a 12v battery. I would like
to use a smaller battery, but I'm a little unclear how all of this
power conversion stuff works. Right now, we have 5 other circuits
inside the housing, all deriving power from the 12v battery. But,
those are all 6v circuits, so I run the 12v through a voltage
regulator, which of course generates gobs of heat. This intuitively
doesn't seem like the right course of action, as it seems any time I
generate heat 'just for the hell of it', I'm losing power. I didn't
sleep through all of my physics classes :-)

Can I use a smaller battery than 12v to power this? I know amps are
important, too, the power issues here just confuse the heck out of me.
I'm a software guy--this hardware stuff is too hard for my feeble mind
to understand. If I wanted to use a smaller voltage power source, how
can I obtain the higher voltage? And would doing that get rid of my
heat problem?

Mocking me for my lack of understanding is OK, just taint it with a
little info and/or schematics for me to go on.

Thanks,
-Chilton Webb