The datasheet calls for a .33uf capacitor for the input pin of the 7805, but I flat out don’t have one.
Instead I have the aforementioned .47uf cap, and some smaller ones that I can put in parallel (I’ve read that parallel caps makes the sum capacitance of all caps).
That’s all, thanks!
Not sure which version of the 7805 you’re looking at the datasheet for, but the TI one says
Although not required, a 0.33-μF bypass capacitor is recommended on the input, and a 0.1-μF bypass capacitor is recommend on the output.
If it’s not required to be there at all, you can probably assume it doesn’t need to be exact! And for the caps used for applications like this, the tolerance may be as bad as 20% in which case there’s hardly any difference between 0.33 µF and 0.47 µF.
So yeah, 0.47 µF is fine.
Hey, thank you. I was going off of the TI datasheet as well linked from the Sparkfun page and it doesn’t mention that anywhere (that I could see). Then again this copy hasn’t been revised since 2003!
Ah, I was looking at the U78L00 series datasheet: https://www.ti.com/lit/ds/symlink/ua78l.pdf . You can find more up to date datasheets at ti.com; here’s the one you were looking at, µA78xx series: https://www.ti.com/lit/ds/symlink/ua78.pdf . It says
9.2.1 Design Requirements
• Input supply capacitor recommended for filtering noise on the input
• Output supply decoupling capacitor for stabilizing the output
(Again, “recommended” rather than “required”.)
Besides the UA78L05 and µA7805 there’s the µA78M05-Q1, µA78M05, LM78M05, LM78L05, and LM7805, and that’s just from TI. I can’t keep them all straight.
Okay, so now I know to look for design requirements in the datasheet.
Yeah I’ve definitely noticed that voltage regulators have a disproportional amount of similar, but different names 
