Mux'd pot crashes Arduino

Development Tools IDE 1.x
1

Hi, I'm using a 4051 to get multiple 10k pots into one analog in. It has started to work well, but I'm having an issue. One pot specifically, when I turn it all the way up seems to crash the arduino. I get the following error message:

Error inside Serial.serialEvent()
java.io.IOException: Bad file descriptor in nativeavailable
at gnu.io.RXTXPort.nativeavailable(Native Method)
at gnu.io.RXTXPort$SerialInputStream.available(RXTXPort.java:1532)
at processing.app.Serial.serialEvent(Serial.java:215)
at gnu.io.RXTXPort.sendEvent(RXTXPort.java:732)
at gnu.io.RXTXPort.eventLoop(Native Method)
at gnu.io.RXTXPort$MonitorThread.run(RXTXPort.java:1575)

If I leave this pot all the way up- the arduino is undiscoverable. The system doesn't recognize it, the COM 4 port is missing, etc etc. But when I use the other two pots- I can turn them all the way up and it doesn't matter.

I'm not sure how much I can get into the details without you guys helping with my muxing project. I'm new here, new to arduino and all of that, but mildly tech savy. I'm assuming there is something shorting out somewhere. Any ideas on where to start looking? I'm using the 5v power pin on a Duemilanove.

Any help is appreciated.

2

I am guessing something is miswired, and when you turn the pot all the way you are shorting out the 5V supply.

But, hard to say for sure with no schematic or code listing.

3

As I was getting ready to take photos and write up a schematic, I switched pots just to make sure and... bad pot. Things work fine now. I wonder if I just connected it poorly/improperly or if it's a bad piece of hardware. Anyways, thanks for the reply. Apologies for noobin' it up.