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Damage when connected to Arduino on an external PSU

Pixy Hardware
#1

Dear Guys:

I am using the Pixy with Arduino to do a color ball follower robot. The Arduino doesn’t seem to supply power enough to the i2c because the Arduino disconnects from my PC intermittently. I tried to use an external power 12vdc supply to the Arduino to attempt to sustain any voltage drops and it worked at first. However, after a few minutes, a smell of burnt semiconductor came out from the Pixy. No apparent damage is visible. I connected the Pixy to my PC to test and the Pixymon is able to detect. The image however was very poor, dark and monochromatic. No settings fixed it and the Pixy seemed blind for good. It cannot process signatures. The Arduino is still functional after the incident.

Has anyone experienced this and has anyone managed to fix it? What could have caused it? I cannot explain what happened because the output of the Arduino to the i2c should be regulated 5 vdc.

I suggest to put a warning on Pixy products to avoid this accident and instead get power directly from the J1 on the Pixy.

Any thoughts, ideas or explanations are highly appreciated. Thanks guys.

JC

#2

Hello,
Are you using an original Pixy or Pixy2.

If you supplied 12V to the unregulated power input (see link below), it is only capable of accepting 10V maximum.

https://docs.pixycam.com/wiki/doku.php?id=wiki:v1:port_pinouts

If this is what happened, you likely damaged PIxy’s linear regulator.

Regarding the image, I’m not sure why the image would be dark and monochromatic, but I’d inspect the lens first.

Hope this helps.

Edward

#3

Thanks, but the power all comes from the i2c bus of the Arduino, no power is directly put to the Pixy. That is why it is very surprising.

#4

How was Pixy being powered? Please be specific.

#5

It only gets power from the Arduino thru the supplied i2c bus cable. The Arduino gets power thru USB and external 12vdc input.