About the article "10 Ways to Destroy an Arduino"

When will we see a RuggeDue? :slight_smile:

Also, a RuggedyPi would be cool, I guess. Although for the Pi, you really want to just use a separate board for the I/O, and that can have the protection on it.

Put my project in the middle of the basement, on the concrete floor, with nothing near it and left it on with both LED sequences running continously for 48 hours.

Nothing got warm... still running two days later...

CarlW:
Put my project in the middle of the basement, on the concrete floor, with nothing near it and left it on with both LED sequences running continously for 48 hours.

Nothing got warm... still running two days later...

HEIWA Vintage Pachinko SKYLE LED Project - YouTube

I'm just curious. What are you trying to demonstrate precisely?

What are you trying to demonstrate precisely?

I think that was "lighting more than 10 LEDs does not noticeably damage the board."

We need someone who's willing to donate an old Arduino board, and actually pull out the test equipment, and just actually what extremes starting with pin current, maxing them out, see how hot the atmega chip gets, repeat again after it's cooling down, actually once and for all have real data.

I've maxed the pins out before, even got the polarity wrong, lived to tell the tail even after seeing smoke come off the damn chip!

besides,

  1. drop it in the sea
  2. give it a child under 5
  3. leaving it accidentally in the oven
  4. leaving it out in a storm with lightning in the area

any more he missed from that article? lol

ma_hty:
I'm just curious. What are you trying to demonstrate precisely?

Hobby is fixing up pachinko machines and re-selling them.
Don't want to burn a house down with LEDs...

This video is slightly closer to end result...

need someone who's willing to donate an old Arduino board, and actually pull out the test equipment, and just actually what extremes starting with pin current,

The only way to assess damage is to slice the chip and look at the wiring and substrate with an electron microscope. That is what the manufacturers do when an important high volume customer has a problem. This almost always shows damage to the relevant part of the circuit. They then either reduce the recommended operating conditions or do something to the design. The latter is very very rare.

There will always be a bit of margin they add and a tolerance from device to device so pushing beyond what the data sheet says is possible, but it dosn't make it any the less a very stupid moronic thing to do.

Grumpy_Mike:
There will always be a bit of margin they add and a tolerance from device to device so pushing beyond what the data sheet says is possible, but it dosn't make it any the less a very stupid moronic thing to do.

This is one of the most important things to keep in mind while reading datasheets. While primarily informative documents; they also serve a role as marketing documents, specifically to designers and engineers. Both purposes have no room for humility, every aspect of the part the manufacturer believes relevant to its use will be included. About the only reason a component would capable of reliable performance of some type beyond what is written in the datasheet is that the manufacturer didn't bother to test that particular case. This last point is why the "name brands" of the electronics industry tend to have longer datasheets with more performance charts and greater information about potential applications, they simply can afford to run more validation testing. However, no matter who made the component they would not intentionally downplay or neglect any potential positive aspect of its performance.

cjdelphi:
besides,

  1. drop it in the sea
  2. give it a child under 5
  3. leaving it accidentally in the oven
  4. leaving it out in a storm with lightning in the area

any more he missed from that article? lol

  1. trying to measure the temperature inside a microwave oven :wink:

I'm sure I've divided by zero a couple times, but this never happened :frowning:

The old HCF (halt and catch fire) instruction?

I think "provide 5V on +5V and ground out Vin" is another way to blow it.

omg, if only every CPU made a special CPU instruction to do what that chip in the video did :open_mouth:

Mission impossible, this digital recording will self destruct in 5 seconds...

 delay(5000);
 selfDestruct(FF);

How many people would try it and then get help to try and fix it ?

The HCF (halt and catch fire) postings reminds me of an incident at my first employer Data General (DG). About a year or two after I joined DG, the new generation of machines known as the MV/Eclipse were being designed. Tracy Kidder wrote Soul of a New Machine about the hardware and firmware design teams of the first of these machines (code named Eagle, officially known as MV/8000).

When we started populating the labs with machines for the software groups to port their software to, the lab manager noticed that Field Service (otherwise known as Field Circus) would take out old revision boards when updating the machines, and rather than destroying them, would eventually install them in some other machine. Evidently these boards would pass the simple minded tests Field Circus used, even if they weren't up to the current revision level.

So the lab manager created what he called a circuit tester. It had an AC plug on one side, and two wires on the other side. After using his circuit tester on the old board, it would fail whatever test Field Circus used, and they wouldn't recycle these boards.
:roll_eyes:

Well I tried method 4 on my arduino mega.
It works (the method, not te board)

MichaelMeissner:
Tracy Kidder wrote Soul of a New Machine

That is a very good book. Highly recommended.

So the lab manager created what he called a circuit tester.

When faced with similar situations, I broke the PCBs in half and claimed they fell on the floor. ]:slight_smile:

I realize this is an old thread, but for they guy running a bunch of LEDs... at what current? You can run 100 LEDs off one AVR pin... if the the total current is less than 40mA. Though most 5mm LEDs can be driven to 20-25mA, you can also drive them to 1mA and they'll still be quite visible.

I think maybe my definition of destroy and his definition of destroy are two different things. I have done several of these things to my Arduino and to my barebones AVR microcontroller circuits, and none of my microcontrollers has been destroyed. In two of my circuits, I exceed the specs a little bit on purpose, because it was easier for me to build it that way. My circuits are running happily along, doing their job and being useful.

Grumpy Mike would argue that they have been damaged, but the damage is imperceptible. He says the only way to detect that it has been damaged is to dismantle the chip and examine it with an electron microscope. I believe him, even though I have no way to test that assertion. But if I can't even tell if it is even damaged, I would argue that "destroy" is a rather strong action word.

Maybe it should be "5 ways to destroy and 5 ways to imperceptibly damage an Arduino."

I agree that there's a spectrum between 'stressed', 'damaged', and 'destroyed'. Furthermore, for hobbyists, a certain degree of stress can be tolerated in some situations (i.e., if you're prepared to purchase a replacement microcontroller without complaining to the forum about it).

For commercial products, it's a whole different ballgame. I sure hope that anything I pay good money for is well within all specified limits.