AGenews
commented
4 years ago Oh I just saw that there's some kind of overvoltage protetcion announced on the new boards according to the newsletter: All acquisition boards purchased through the Open Ephys store will now include over-voltage protection on the power jack. The device still only works with a 5V supply, but now you won’t fry the board if you accidentally plug in a different type of adapter. Over the past two years, OEPS has repaired 15 boards damaged by an incorrect voltage source. Hopefully this update will help make the acquisition board even more user-friendly. Where does one find these mods? A zener etc. somewhere attached to the DC barrel jack?
Best, Andreas
I was wondering whether It would make sense to include some sort of self-resetting fuse / polyfuse on the power rails to protect the FPGA from the occasional shorting. Alternatively TI offers some eFuses (e.g TPS2596 or for the high voltages TPS2660 with cool circuit breaking func) where users could later change the overvoltage/undervoltage & overcurrent settings by changing some resistors? Moreover these parts have somr monitor outputs which at least could light up a big red LED to signal a problem. This is now the second time I see an OpalKelly FPGA going up in smoke in our lab. One, by accidentally applying +12V for a brief time (so OpalKelly has NO onboard overvoltage protection ...) and yesterday I just realized that the bare USB2.0 FPGA is not recognized at all and if connected to the AQC board one of the TI LJ245's (upper FPGA side one) gets very hot (so presumably some damage on both parts). I guess I could have connected the populated I/O adapter to the DAC out port for some time ... ;(
Well just a thought ....
Best, Andreas