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[Reply #30 on:]

From reports that I've seen, more people are abusing their AVRs and having them appear to survive (ie by driving LEDs directly with no current limiting resistors), than are having their AVRs die from momentary overloads.

Yep. AVR chips seem quite resilient to having their output pins shorted to ground. It's a good thing too, when you see the abuse they get (keep reading these forums for horror stories...)

Aside: I wonder if the designers knew this?

They even seem to survive being plugged into the socket backwards. Atmel didn't put the VCC/GND pins diagonally opposite each other - a common trick used to kill chips in the old days (eg. 74LS logic chips).

OTOH don't assume this is 'normal' for electronics. Many chips will die instantly at the slightest abuse.

[Reply #31 on:]

Yep. AVR chips seem quite resilient to having their output pins shorted to ground. It's a good thing too, when you see the abuse they get (keep reading these forums for horror stories...)

I wonder if we are going to see horror stories about people's new Dues being destroyed due them being less sensitive to abuse and because of the 3.3v vs. 5v issues.  Shorting out your first Due is a teachable moment, shorting out the second probably indicates whether you ignored the teachable moment.

[Reply #32 on:]

I wonder if we are going to see horror stories about people's new Dues being destroyed due them being less sensitive to abuse and because of the 3.3v vs. 5v issues.

I really can't see how it is reasonable to expect anything else.

[Reply #33 on:]

Yep. AVR chips seem quite resilient to having their output pins shorted to ground. It's a good thing too, when you see the abuse they get (keep reading these forums for horror stories...)

I wonder if we are going to see horror stories about people's new Dues being destroyed

If the Raspberry Pi forums are anything to go by, it won't be pretty.

Shorting out your first Due is a teachable moment, shorting out the second probably indicates whether you ignored the teachable moment.

The Leonardos too, there's no $3 quick repair for them...

[Reply #34 on:]

When will we see a RuggeDue? :-)

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.

[Reply #35 on:]

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...

http://youtu.be/V1SyCLw40U0

[Reply #36 on:]

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...

http://youtu.be/V1SyCLw40U0

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

[Reply #37 on:]

What are you trying to demonstrate precisely?

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

[Reply #38 on:]

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!

[Reply #39 on:]

besides,


11. drop it in the sea
12. give it a child under 5
13. leaving it accidentally in the oven
14. leaving it out in a storm with lightning in the area

any more he missed from that article? lol

[Reply #40 on:]

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...

http://youtu.be/SgMpPKOaBpc

[Reply #41 on:]

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.

[Reply #42 on:]

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.     

[Reply #43 on:]

besides,


11. drop it in the sea
12. give it a child under 5
13. leaving it accidentally in the oven
14. leaving it out in a storm with lightning in the area

any more he missed from that article? lol

15. trying to measure the temperature inside a microwave oven

[Reply #44 on:]

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