PaulRB:
How? A 300 led rgb strip is going to need 6A, how can a <1A supply have worked?
It always worked perfectly when connected directly. Never had any issues. It came with the LED Strips. Heres what it says on the back:
CrossRoads:
Barrel jack and Vin have a diode in between them. Vin bypasses the diode, and feeds the 5V regulator directly.
I would put the questionable source into the barrel jack.
Thats exactly what I did.
The way I had my LED strips hooked up is the 4pins of the end of the strip were plugged into the breadboard, and before I removed the external power adaptor from the barrel jack I removed the LED strips from the breadboard instead putting them back in the box. A few seconds later a very small stream of smoke starting coming from the AMS117 regulator just below the barrel jack. I quickly turned it off and a solid light is present on the arduino beside the letter L under the TX,RX LEDs. I'm not sure whether its a coincidence or not that the smoke started coming at the exact same time as I removed my strips or whether it was just getting extremely hot while I was using it and it decided to die at the same time as I removed my strips. Not sure where the fault was. Either I shouldn't have removed my LED strips first and should have removed the external power first or the AMS1117 was faulty or my external power adaptor was unreliable. Either way my PC doesn't detect the arduino anymore but thankfully my USB ports are fine.