Applied power in reverse - any chance I can resurrect it?
So, yeah, big-time rookie mistake - I applied power to my KiwiSDR in reverse polarity. That unmistakable smell of burnt electronics quickly followed. Is there any chance I just killed something easy(ish) to fix, or should I just be ordering another one at this point?
The BeagleBone Green still seems to boot up just fine when I disconnect the Kiwi board and power it via the micro USB port. Who knows what damage may have been done to the GPIO pins, but at least I can back up my configuration (which I should have done long ago!)
Comments
It sounds like the PMIC on the BBG did what it should and saved the day for that portion. If it was me I think I'd isolatedthe KiwiSDR board and see if perhaps only the power conditioning there died. The differential choke, T301, right at the barrel connector is marginal for current requirements in a stock Kiwi and almost guaranteed to eventually die on a BBAI which requires more so maybe only the Kiwi PS stuff smoked. The choke doesn't actually seem to matter much for PSRR on the Kiwi so simply jumpering its pins after verifying (replacing if necessary) the shunt C's might make it all work OK again.
I think it's worth examination at least.
I saw that choke on the board and wondered if maybe that was a point of failure. I'll see what I can do about checking those components. At least they're big enough for me to see!
Holy crap, it WORKED! I removed that choke and just jumpered across the pads and my Kiwi is working once again! Thanks so much for the suggestion.
I didn't have the proper tools to desolder the choke so I did the next best thing - snapped it off the board with a pair of pliers, cleaned the solder mask off the area where the pads were (the pads themselves were ripped off along with the choke, which I expected), and soldered on a couple of jumper wires. That's all it took!
Thanks again!