Duet Troubles

I'm right in thinking that if I hook up the power (coming from the psu board) the wrong way to the screw terminals on the duet board I'll kill it. I think that's what I've done as the duet now only displays one red led (and no leds on the ethernet port). Just want confirmation or a fix incase it's recoverable.

Hi Carnivalius

Unfortunately, we have not tested what happens when you do this to a Duet board! It's likely that, even if it doesn't toast the ARM chip, which is supplied with power by a voltage regulator, it may destroy other parts of the board. I've asked the designer of the board to see if he can work out what may happen, and I'll let you know.

Ian
RepRapPro tech support

This is sad... barely out of the stocks and people are already destroying them...

How expensive is it to add reverse power protection to these things ? If I have one criticism of the most of the controllers out there is they're not robust enough.

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pocketmoon
How expensive is it to add reverse power protection to these things ? If I have one criticism of the most of the controllers out there is they're not robust enough.

I don't think there is a cheap way to make them foolproof. If it was a purely consumer plug and play product, you could have unique plugs and connectors which avoid error. But where you have a kit which requires wiring by the user, then the opportunity for mis-wiring is always there. This is a weakness of RAMPS certainly, there are lots of similar connectors with +/- on adjacent pins. The Pololus are not polarised, I've seen people plug them in backwards.

Are there some controllers you do consider robust enough then?

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bobc
Are there some controllers you do consider robust enough then?

Not that I've found I agree about kit vs consumer - anything that requires construction is open to user error. But there are certainly cheap ways of adding things like overcurrent protection with resettable fuses and I would pay a premium for a board fitted with proper sockets rather than screw terminals.

Rob

Look at the Duet schematic.
It clearly shows reverse 12v is protected by a diode.

I was able to revive it after letting it sit for several hours. But in the construction steps having a "this pin to this pin" for it would be useful as they are not obviously labelled (for me anyway).