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Powering up VoCore

Posted: Sat Feb 21, 2015 11:59 am
by Rabbitlancer
Hello. I'm having trouble powering up VoCore: I use 3 AA batteries for that purpose (gives me 4.5V), but the power appears to be too high and VoCore gives some smoke shortly afterwards. Of course, I disconnect as soon as I see the smoke, but I have a couple questions however.

How should I power up VoCore and why the setup with 3 AA batteries is so dangerous? I've seen people connect the board to 4 AA batteries, and everything ran just fine. What might be my problem?

Re: Powering up VoCore

Posted: Mon Feb 23, 2015 12:48 pm
by Vonger
I think you might connect to wrong pin. It should connect to release version 3.5V~6.0V pin(make sure you are using correct pin map from vocore.io but not my blog, somebody use alpha pin map might destroy the final version of vocore)

Re: Powering up VoCore

Posted: Tue Feb 24, 2015 8:07 pm
by Endat
The graphic below is how I use batteries.. my 6v power supply is an enclosure that holds 4x AAA batteries.

Image

Unfortunately, I wired mine wrong and now I have to use a 3.7v battery. I wouldn't be surprised if you also lost use of your 3.5-6v pins as well.

Here is the thread.
viewtopic.php?f=2&t=318

Re: Powering up VoCore

Posted: Wed Feb 25, 2015 9:01 pm
by Rabbitlancer
Well, that's the point, those were the exact pins I've been connecting to. Besides, since my last post, I borrowed a second board from a friend - we bought two of them together - and connected it to the USB power. The result was exactly the same.

Judging by the information I've gathered around, the problem's in the voltage regulator, and I am bypassing it when connecting to 3.3V power, right? Because the LED does light when I connect to those pins (which NEVER happened during my USB or 3xAA powerups), but I did not kept it running for long as I've been applying some extra voltage to these pins and I wanted to avoid further destruction of the board, as I don't have a battery case to hold 2xAA batteries yet to provide a stable 3V power.

In other words. If I have the 3-6V pins burnt out, I still can use the 3.3V pin, is that right?

Re: Powering up VoCore

Posted: Thu Feb 26, 2015 1:25 am
by Vonger
If only DCDC damaged, you can use 3.3V power pin as a replace.
But if the main chip damaged, no way to work :)

Re: Powering up VoCore

Posted: Sat Feb 28, 2015 8:40 am
by Endat
Yeah, my 3.5-6.0 volt pins are burned out because of the voltage regulator. But I still power it with the 3.3v pin.