r/arduino • u/Quirky_Adeptness7105 • Aug 08 '26
Why is my board smoking
Barely used this board, just plugged it in to load up some code, smelt burning then it started smoking.... :/
Did I do something wrong?
Powering it via usbc from my laptop
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u/c_l_b_11 Aug 08 '26
Noo, you let the magic smoke out. It does not work without the smoke
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u/evthrowawayverysad Aug 08 '26
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u/No_Tailor_787 Aug 08 '26
The chip doesn't have the refiller cap.
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u/evthrowawayverysad Aug 08 '26
nah just pour it in the same hole the smoke is coming out of and slap a band-aid on there
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u/oleivas Aug 08 '26
In this case board usually have a way to upload the refill by sideliading with the firmware.
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u/deefstes Aug 08 '26
Then what does open source even mean?
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u/FedUp233 Aug 08 '26
That you have to open up the source to be able to put new magic smoke back in! 😁
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u/Whitakerz Aug 09 '26
That version isn’t supported for rev 3. The new refill is https://imgur.com/a/hnJcPi5
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u/Professional-Risk-34 Aug 08 '26
Correct. Now the magic smoke has departed your next bet is to return it. Classed as magic smoke removed from device.
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u/309_Electronics Aug 08 '26
Something is shorted or you fried it somehow.
That big chip is the main r4 microocntroller chip. Aka the chip that normally when it works fine and has not released the smoke, will execute your code.
It letting out the magic smoke meas yor board is dead.
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u/Radamat Aug 08 '26
If big chip smokes it means overvoltage.
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u/PizzaSalamino Aug 08 '26
Not always true. Depends a lot on the chip and what type of fault there is. Many smoke because of a short at the output, for example
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u/LowResGamr Aug 09 '26
But there's also an esp32 on the board, i'm slightly confused here. Is the esp the microcontroller or is that qfp chip the microcontroller?
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u/ivosaurus Aug 09 '26
No, Arduino just decided that they wanted a full-fat MCU as as a WiFi bridge chip. That said, I'm not sure how many good functioning standalone wifi bridge chips are out there any more. 99% of embedded products, if they want wifi, it'll be built into the main chip.
This is because they also sell a version of the board without that.
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u/istarian Aug 11 '26
My guess would be that the ESP chips are cheaper than a typical WiFi chip used for this purpose, which matters when you're selling individual units to consumers.
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u/hyperdream Aug 08 '26
Welcome to the club, we've all done it.
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u/jnwatson Aug 08 '26
Story time. Once upon a time when I was a young sales engineer, I went to a customer to demonstrate my company's JTAG debugger. We were in a conference room with the sales guy and a bunch of potential customers; this was in the days when I had a digital projector connected to a laptop.
I had my *customer's* eval board, my JTAG box, and I was just plugging things in as the sales guy was talking. I had 2 wall warts with DC power barrel connectors, one for the JTAG box and one for the eval board. The JTAG box, designed by sane people, was positive tip. Whoever designed the eval board was clearly an iconoclast because the DC connector was *negative tip* (I think it is only time I've ever seen that).
You probably see where this is going. In my haste, I accidentally plugged the positive tip barrel connector into the eval board, immediately letting the magic smoke out of the customer's board in a room full of customers. The best part was the fan on the eval board still worked, and it was directly underneath the projector beam, so everyone in the room could see a beautiful helix of smoke blocking the projected image on the screen.
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u/NoBulletsLeft Aug 08 '26
Yeah, you learn from those things.
My rule for demos on any project I'm leading is you connect everything together, test the hell out of it, then power off and don't touch it. I always tell them to either lock the lab or put a big sign saying "DON'T TOUCH" next to the demo setup. If the demo is complex enough, have a written list of steps to follow.
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u/FedUp233 Aug 08 '26
The only problem with a big font touch sign is that to some people it’s like the big button that says DO NOT PUSH - it makes it virtually impossible to resist! 😁
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u/ivosaurus Aug 08 '26 edited Aug 09 '26
Don't ever get into guitar pedals xD
Also customer's board should have had a reverse polarity diode...
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u/Lagduf Aug 08 '26
A lot of Sony products were center negative.
I think guitar pedals are too.
Agreed it’s annoying and i always check.
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u/FedUp233 Aug 08 '26
That sounds worse than the occasional positive ground old car test shows up now and then!
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u/Moist-Ointments Aug 08 '26
Does it still count if I did it to a DVD player but not a microcontroller board?
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u/Proximity Aug 09 '26 edited 26d ago
Treatment lunchroom bear caption sort payment
This post was anonymized with Redact
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u/reddit_user_14553 Aug 08 '26
I was given a raspberry pi by my high school for the robotics club, and the motor controller hat I was given along with it was faulty and shorted out, fried the pi instantly. Happens to everyone at least once.
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u/CoreMemory_156 Aug 08 '26
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u/JayBerJabber Uno Aug 08 '26
This meme has transcended beyond GPUs
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u/AlwaysHopelesslyLost Aug 11 '26
It was never just about GPUs. Basically every niche subreddit uses this meme and thinks it only comes from their e niche subreddit
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u/InformationClean3245 Aug 08 '26
Its rebelling against authority. You just dont understand him
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u/jdiogoforte Aug 08 '26
Just wait until he starts wearing all black and brings home his new tattooed and full of piercings girlfriend.
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u/oliverer3 Aug 08 '26
Any chance you placed it on a metal surface when you plugged it in, say your laptop?
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u/Better-Psychology-42 Aug 08 '26
Just to be clear, it was dead a few seconds before you saw the smoke..
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u/ClonesRppl2 Aug 08 '26
It is 99% likely dead now. Check the board (top and bottom) for a blob of solder or small piece of wire bridging 2 contacts. You might as well use this as a learning opportunity.
Accidents happen. I always run my projects through a powered USB hub (the type with an external power supply). This will add a layer of protection for your computers USB port.
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u/Panzerv2003 Aug 08 '26
It's dead or at least damaged, something is shorting and the smoke is a result of something trying to conduct more power than it's supposed to
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u/LoadZealousideal7778 Aug 08 '26
Yeah thats toast. Nothing to fix there unless you are REALLY good at soldering.
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u/Formal_Substance_687 Aug 12 '26
Fun fact, they run on smoke, if you let the smoke out they no longer run.
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u/GlobalLibrarian4075 Aug 08 '26
i remember my first time burning a board. actually they were two , an esp32 and an esp8266. Never had a bad experience like that
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u/Last_Shallot2265 Aug 08 '26
It ended up into really bad company. You should have raised it well. Good parenting
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u/CldesignsIN 600K , 750K Aug 08 '26
Idk but you should probably leave it plugged in until it fully lights on fire...
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u/lucasdpfeliciano Aug 08 '26
The soul left the chip, you can capture it with a bag to put back in the chip.
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u/antek_g_animations I like creating stuff with arduino Aug 08 '26
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u/pm_stuff_ Aug 08 '26
Because everything is a light if you use it wrong enough. Somethibg if shorted or dead in some way. Could be any number of things.
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u/LovableSidekick Aug 08 '26
Dude don't take a fucking video, cut the power. Prolly way too late now. smh
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u/ProfessionalDust Aug 08 '26
Dude, the magic of electronics is running away! Quick! Begin the chant to electronic Gods
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u/Forward-Hedgehog4224 Aug 08 '26
“Once the smoke is out, it never goes back in” The legend Paul McWorther
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u/TheSheepDev Aug 08 '26
Ohh that is the magical smoke, its needed for the chip to run. If its not in there then it will not work. So either you have to put it back in, or get a new one
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u/RealCreacher Aug 08 '26
Did you possibly plug your arduino into a thunderbolt port(that is, if the laptop has one) rather than standard usb-c? Or did you possibly touch any components on the board while it was on? There’s obviously a short somewhere. A blown capacitor or resistor would be my guess. My thoughts about plugging into thunderbolt have me wondering if there’s too much voltage going through the board. Not saying you did do that, but it’s just a guess. There’s a possibility the 5 volt rail on your laptop has a short somewhere too, but who knows.
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u/Fantastic-Motor-6098 Aug 08 '26
Something either shorted your power to a random pin and it fried the microcontroller, or something shorted the usb input past the voltage regulator and fried it. Post a picture of the back of it if you can
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u/Lines25 Aug 08 '26
Naaah, it's secret feature called "smoking". Now, put the meat on top of chip and it will make it very hot and it will put really tasty magic smoke in it !
/jk
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u/FunBike450 Aug 08 '26
bro when u see ur board smoking , u turn it off immediately lol don’t take a video
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u/properal Aug 08 '26
You let the smoke out.
If you let the smoke out it won't work anymore.
You need to keep the smoke inside.
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u/Hot-Caterpillar5484 Aug 08 '26
I very much appreciate posts of people making a problem actively worse
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u/recca6512 Aug 08 '26
This is why I stayed away from anything hardware post graduating with my EE/CE degree.
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u/ThatCrankyGuy Aug 08 '26
LOL you let the pixies out. rip. there's a manufacturing defect somewhere.
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u/Full_Difficulty9530 Aug 08 '26
Oh... The magic smoke was let out... The better question is what's not working on your board now?
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u/drazil100 Aug 09 '26
I’d say to tell it that smoking reduces life expectancy and can lead to lung cancer, but I’m pretty sure it’s already dead.
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u/brunogbasto Aug 09 '26
Old generations like to smoke. Try getting the newer ones like Gen Z. Those don’t smoke
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u/Noahms456 Aug 09 '26
The magic smoke! Time to get a new Arduino - you’ve let the machine spirit escape
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u/Wizard_Donkey Aug 09 '26
I did a lot of this in my engineering degree, I'm terrible with electronics to this day LOL getting beaten up in projects
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u/Mrsaintj Aug 09 '26
It's probably just a little stressed and needs to take a little smoke to sort things out
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u/_unregistered Aug 09 '26
First day in my first software engineering class in college the teacher said he doesn’t know much about the witchcraft that hardware engineers do except one important thing. Don’t let the magic blue smoke out.
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u/findergrrr Aug 08 '26
Its dead. Look at the back of the board. Something is shorting.