Help? - Smoked a Pi Zero when building a SSR setup for Bradley


 

Doug Cook

New member
Here and I thought my first post would be a triumph of soldering a HeaterMeter and showing a pretty simple way I thought up of adding it to a Bradley Smoker. I tend to lurk but had planned to make it a point of giving back to the world with stuff I did this year to help others and this was to be my first addition. Help me past this issue and I promise to do just that? :) Stinks that the first thing is a diagnosis. I tried searching past threads with no luck.

I'm worried (confident actually) that I have smoked my Pi-Zero when double checking what wires in the Ethernet cable should hook to my SSR.

I got the HeatMeter all soldered up and did a bunch of tests with the set point a little at room temperature. That way I could just use body heat to make sure it was turning on and that I was getting the right voltage etc.. Everything was perfect!

Test Config: HeaterMeter powered up, Ethernet cable to a 1 foot long Ethernet flange cable (Simple male end and female end cable I plan to mount to the inside of the smoke generator box where I will put my SSR). I had already cut off the male end of the flange cable and stripped the main wire sheath back. I had the HM on and the set point at 80F so I can manipulate the blower voltage on and off with heat from my hand. I verified I had 12V to the blower on the board. I felt like I needed to double check that I was hooking the right wires up to the SSR on the flange cable. I don't know how, but I got myself confused on what I was probing (I'm reasonably confident it was only the +5V, Ground, Servo and Blower) and obviously completed a circuit that was not intended to be completed. I could smell something burn and the back of the Pi-Zero was smoking hot. I removed the Pi-Zero and hooked it just by itself up to another of my typical RPi supplies and it got smoking hot again. I looked over all the components as best I can and don't see any discoloration on anything.

This is beyond my troubleshooting abilities. I don't know if I messed up something on the HeaterMeter and that also messed up the Pi or if I just messed up the Pi. I don't want to hook up one of my good RPi 3's and mess it up if something is bad on the HM.

Thoughts? Any help is greatly appreciated!

Thanks,
Doug
 
If you managed to put +12v onto the +5v bus, you most likely fried the voltage regulator on the Pi
 
Thanks! I found the board schematic in the sticky. I removed the pi and the display and added power. It looks like everything on the HM board is at the correct voltage. I added back the display because it looked like if the pi high voltage the. The display would have as well? Display seems to be functioning. "no pit probe" or the temp if the TC is hooked up. I have a new pi zero on the way.
 
New Pi Zero fixed it. Working on pulling together a post on the setup. Cooked three shoulders this weekend for the first run.
Thanks for the help,
Doug
 

 

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