Smoke smell, plus some other problems on the arduino

Yes it's not the original arduino. But, if it still works then I guess I'm good. Phew. Thanks for everybody that answered. I was terrified I might've messed up.

Sorry this is electronics and your feelings have nothing to do with it. Maybe refrain from posting when you know so little about it. You are just plain wrong and that is an end to it. In fact it is dangerously wrong.

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Replace the capacitors you might have popped them even the big ones, and while you are at it replace the regulator.

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I mentioned this before but, I'm a beginner at electronics, and I don't want to mess anything up

I wouldn't try to solder SMD parts as an absolute beginner.

If you really want a board with no faults, just buy one. If you don't care and everything works fine, ride it out. Maybe it'll die later but at least you got something out of it.

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What's dangerous about it?

I'm not disagreeing, just curious.

You mentioned that the breadboard PSU outputs 4.3V and if that's true then you're absolutely right, OP should not connect it to VIN. If it outputs 5V they will probably be fine, but omitting the connection is still a better idea.

EDIT - The reason I put it in the tutorial I drew up is simple. Most of my projects are battery powered, and use one power source through VIN. I haven't used dual power sources before (maybe once), so I figured I would play it safe.

Yeah, I'm not even sure the next time I'm getting another board

No I didn’t. Have a read of what I said.
The Vin line on an Arduino Uno is connected through a series diode to the input of the regulator. This diode drops 0.7V so if you connect 5V to the Vin it will put 4,3V onto the input of a 5V regulator. So the output of that regulator is going to be something in the order of 2.8V which you then propose to connect to 5V. This is all screwed up.

You only ever have a common ground, you never have both the ground and supply connected to two power sources because they start to fight each other. Leading to currents going in all sorts of directions.

Interesting. I need to take a look at the Arduino schematic, especially as I'm planning on building my own ATmega328 MCU at some point. As for your second point, I feel like I read this somewhere but I can't remember where.

Anyways, the verdict is that OP should remove the +5V to VIN connection, yes? I will go and edit the "tutorial" post now.

@luaykotb, feel free to continue with your project, and I hope it goes well!

Thank you!

You mean this thing?

You do realise that this is as equally useless as the regulator on the Arduino UNO (Mega 2560 etc.) and for the exact same reason?

What, because of low current limits?

I'm aware.

Properly dimensioned and heatsinked regulators don't get 'hot'. They may get lukewarm, but if they get hot, whomever engineered/put together the circuit did a poor job. Such as using a 1117 to power a servo, for instance. That's just silly.

I was assuming here that OP didn't have another source of 5V. I told them to use the breadboard supply because it's more replaceable than the Arduino in the case something goes wrong. I'm not suggesting that they should continue to use them for servos.

Also I have a very short little anecdote to share about hot regulators. When I was prototyping my combat robot, I decided it would be a good idea to charge LiPos off of my breadboard power supply. I connected the power supply to a cheap 1S LiPo charger board and then connected the charger board to the LiPos. The LiPos began charging, and they finished charging without a problem, but the breadboard power supply was hot almost to the point where I couldn't touch it. It still works though.

Considering that my breadboard power supply (200mA) could handle a task normally undertaken by a USB cable (2A), I think OP will be fine with a small servo for a quick proof-of-concept, especially if they are working with the same kit as I am (which they likely are).

@IceChes I hope your parents have great insurance.

It wasn't, like, about to catch fire. Only around 100C or so. I was also in the room the whole time, not being too confident about the setup. (I've heard horror stories about overcharged LiPos blowing up.)

The point is that part of the specification for (presumably) all these regulators is that they perform thermal shutdown, simply switching off and ceasing to provide current at a certain (quite high) temperature.

If you actually achieve smoke, you have not just overloaded them, but subjected them to conditions completely outside of their specification.

Or so we used to consider. The modern alternative apparently is that the part you have in front of you is not "real". :roll_eyes:

From what I've read those cheap regulators that arrive on slow boats often fail to open when they fry. So if you're regulating 7.6V down to 5V and you tank it, it will pass 7.6V downstream.
Haven't seen it just read about it.

Interesting.

Honestly I should invest in some 1.5A 5V regulators. I only have one that I nabbed from an ATX PSU.

Get them from mouser or digikey
Avoid aliexpress, ebay, amazon for parts that can be dangerous
Lots of fakes out there

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