Dp I need a new board? *Gulp*

[matta757]

Hey guys,

The BUO836X is the heart and soul of my sim's buttons, switches, rotaries and pots. I have 4 of them. Of these, 2 are being used for my overhead. Until about a week ago, all of the +5v outputs from the axes were being used to power LED lights in my korry switches. This was a great solution to power LED's since I didn't need the axes, but with Ian's genius idea to turn rotaries into pots, I needed to free up some of those axes inputs, including the +5v.

Well luckily, I found that the LED's can easily be powered off just a few of these +5v, so for the last week I have been re-wiring and combining LED's on 3 of the +5v outputs on each board, leaving me with plenty of open axes for my newly constructed rotaries.

But then today, as I was wiring my last set of LED wires together, something bad happened. I am not sure how it happened, because none of the wires I was soldering were plugged into any power sources, but as I was soldering these wires, there was a spark off the tip of the soldering iron and a few puffs of smoke from several of the resistors attached to my LED's (and I am embarrassed to admit that I forgot to unplug the board itself from the USB port, so I am sure that's why this happened  ). The resistors ended up being burned out, as well as the LED's.

So after kicking myself a few times, I got back to work replacing the burned out resistors and LED's. Once I finished, I discovered a more worrisome problem; many of the switch inputs (but not all) on this particular board are no longer responding. Oddly, the LED's still light up when the switch is closed, but the joystick controller and FS do not see any button press. I tried re-connecting with some different switches, but it appears that nothing will work. So finally my question is; clearly I think I burned out my board, or part of it, so do I need to just buy a new board or is there a way to fix this damn mess I have gotten myself into?

Any input would be greatly appreciated. I feel so stupid for letting this happen, knowing that all I needed to do was unplug the fricken board. I am not sure what exactly happened to cause the burnout, but now I am in fix up mode.

Regards,
Matt

[bussgarfield]

Hi Matt.

Don't you just love this cockpit building lark.
Sorry to hear of your tale of woe. I don't think I can help directly but when I was trying to get my flaps gauge operational, I was using the OC servos card. I too cocked up the wiring by plugging the power supply the wrong way round and whilst I didn't get the sparks, I did get the smoke and a horrible smell. I could see the part of the circuit board that had blackened under the heat and thought it a simple job to solder a wire on to by-pass the defected bit but to no avail. I had obviously burnt out more than I could see.
The only answer for me was to get a new servos card, which I have but as yet I have not dared try to get it connected. I have so much other stuff to do at the moment.

Small consolation for you but at least you know that you are not alone !!

Gary

[Maurice]

Sorry to add more worries for you, but you should also check the USB port on the PC (or USB hub) to make sure that was not affected by the short circuit. Just plug in a mouse or keyboard and make sure the USB port itself is OK. Most likely it is, but it never hurts to check before you spend hours troubleshooting something else.

Maurice

[matta757]

Hey Maurice,

I thought of that too, but considering that most of the button and axes inputs on the board are still working, I assume that the USB port is not damaged. Luckily, this card is not plugged directly into the computer but ran though a USB hub.

It's weird because probably only 10 of the button inputs no longer work, but the rest of the card does not seem to have a problem. That's why I was saving hope that it might be salvageable. But it's not looking like that's the case. I'm going to check and see if I see any blackened parts of the card, like Gary did.

Matt