When needed I have always used a 12v 1.6a power brick with my arduino (it has always worked fine). Recently I have been working on a project that will require about 2-3 amps. I talked to a freind of mine and he said that he had his arduinos power hooked directly with a computer power supply and it worked great for him. I wired mine up (to a 12v 18amp) but as soon as I plugged it in....I smelled the famous burning electric smell. nothing looks "fried" on the board itself.....Reason I tried this was because not only did it work for my friend but also because in theory the arduino should only pull what it needs, meaning it wouldnt get the full grunt of 18 amp?
Is there any power protection that needs to be reset or something or should I start shopping for a new one?
For a Arduino Uno, 12V at the power plug is okay.
You can use a PC power supply. I have a PC power supply with a sense wire connected to something to turn it on. I made sure that the voltages were good without load.
If you have a old PC power supply, it might not work without load. The Arduino board was perhaps too small as a load.
If you connected the 12V wrongly, the board could be fried.
Just test the Arduino board with the old power supply.
What was smelling ? The Arduino or the power supply.
I believe some older p.c. power supplies had a negative 12 volt rail. If you accidentally connected it to a negative 12 volt 'source' a blue smoke situation might very well occur ...
fkeel:
I believe some older p.c. power supplies had a negative 12 volt rail. If you accidentally connected it to a negative 12 volt 'source' a blue smoke situation might very well occur ...
Most likely not as there is a series polarity protection diode to protect the DC connector from damage due to reverse applied voltage. If however you wired reverse voltage to the Vin pin directly there would be no such protection.
Ok well after a ton of research and testing I have found the original problem....apparently the wire I used was labeled wrong so 12v and ground from the pc got switched, therefore it shorted. I changed them around and plugged the arduino in and now it half works. It blinks like its usually starting up, but the pc says that "the device cannot start (code 10)". I did notice one of the chips getting extremely hot so maybe something is still bad?