We're Smokin' Now!

Been awhile since my last post. With summer activities leading right into school activities for Dragonfly and Wolfbait, we haven't had any time for robotics lately. In fact, I tried something shortly after my last post and haven't even taken the time to get some pictures and write it up, until now.



So here it is, the H-bridge implemented on a circuit board. I soldered one up and started on the second--one for each rear wheel--and then decided to try the first one out. I hooked it up and turned on the power. One nice thing about the power supply with the load resistor (see June 1, 2005) is that when there's a short, there isn't a big puff of smoke. Nevertheless, the circuit quickly heated up and began to smoke. I shut off the power immediately, but I'm sure my MOSFETs are cooked. I guess I need to do some tests before applying power to circuits in the future. Of course, it doesn't help that my soldering looks like the amature job it really is. I don't see anything, but I might have shorted something with a bead of solder. Back to the drawing board...