I need to power seven 12v arcade buttons, so I'm using an 500ma AC/DC adapter for an external power supply. The voltage on the adapter ranges from 1.5 to 12 volts. I am powering my Arduino UNO with a USB cable because I need to use serial communication in my project.
My issue is that whenever I set the adapter to a voltage higher than 6v, my laptop and Arduino both shut down. Everything is sharing ground. Maybe there is a back-voltage issue? Is the computer trying to draw too much current? I thought that 500ma was a safe amount to use. If anyone could help me figure out what's going on I'd really appreciate it!
Sounds to me like you're connecting a voltage greater than 5v to either the 5v power rail or one of the I/O pins. You must not apply any voltage higher than 5v or lower than 0v to any I/O pin. You must not apply an external voltage to the 5v pin when plugged into USB, either (at least one the Uno - other boards may be more tolerant of this depending on what board it is, though you usually need to avoid it). Abusing the board in this way can easily damage the Arduino. It looks like your computer also doesn't properly protect the USB ports, meaning you may eventually damage your computer if you keep doing this.
Why do you need 12v to interact with a button? What kind of buttons are you using, and how do you have them wired? Post a schematic.
damien12:
My issue is that whenever I set the adapter to a voltage higher than 6v, my laptop and Arduino both shut down. Everything is sharing ground. Maybe there is a back-voltage issue? Is the computer trying to draw too much current? I thought that 500ma was a safe amount to use. If anyone could help me figure out what's going on I'd really appreciate it!
The problem is that just like the first poster in this thread, we have absolutely no idea what it is you are doing as you have completely failed to tell us what you have connected, and how.
This will require a diagram and a photograph - perfectly focused in good light, showing everything you have connected.
Sorry, didn't read sufficiently carefully!
The posts by "Miranda235" and "damien12" are in fact nothing more than a piece of the OP text with a (not obviously harmful) spam link inserted; they do not appear to be genuine and have been reported to the moderators. The OP is long gone so further discussion is useless.
