Although new on the forum I have already some experience with Arduino's. For a new project I wanted to use the accelerometer MPU6050. I found an instruction arduino-and-mpu6050-accelerometer-and-gyroscope-tutorial
and connected the Nano according to instructions with 4 wires. When I connected the USB there immediately was some smoke and a small component melted. The Nano was dead. I thought I was unlucky with the Nano and grabbed me another one. I checked the wires again, but the same. So I have two fried nano's now.
Neither the Nano or the sensor have any pin headers soldered to them in your pictures. Have you been pushing wires into the holes? That's a recipe for accidental short circuits which could easily cause damage. Solder pin headers on to both and use a breadboard. I would recommend 22AWG solid core wire for hookup rather than those unreliable Dupont cables.
Post your schematic, so we can check how you wired them together.
Thanks for your guidance. I used dupont wires which I pinned through the holes on the breadboard. I do this often to test things without soldering. No problems with this so far. The scheme is in the link of the instruction. Do I need to copy this in the post if this is inconvenient for you? Do you have any suggestions how to repair the nano's?
The fried component is probably a diode to prevent power from going toward your PC USB port if you happen to power the Nano from a battery or power supply at the same time you have USB connected for programming. You can program the Nano using a programmer or another working Arduino as ISP, and see if it works. If it blew up, it is likely you were drawing too much current from the USB port, perhaps you had something hooked up wrong or had a short. It's hard to tell what may have happened. I've done it, too.
Like PaulRB, I recommend solder header pins on your components.
Regarding your statement/question "The scheme is in the link of the instruction. Do I need to copy this in the post if this is inconvenient for you?" I have a tip. I recommend expanding the audience of your posts and making reading the posts as convenient as possible. Some of the very knowledgeable people here may help dozens or even hundreds of people a day, and posts that have links in them are often glanced at, but then it is too time consuming to click links, download pictures, and do other research. Here is a topic that will help you post pictures and show them in your post: https://forum.arduino.cc/index.php?topic=519037.0
Links are good to give, as supplementary information.
Give lots of thorough information and show pictures of how you have it hooked up. The more clear you are, the easier your pictures and schematics are to follow, the better help you will get.
