Arduino repaired

Last night, after spending hours experimenting how to make two arduinos communicate wirelessly with the nrf24l01+ module, I finally succeeded in my intention. I just toke a video of the (unbelievable ) event, and suddenly the serial monitor on one of the arduinos suddenly crashed.

Guess what happened? Yes. The arduino touched they keys on the table and 5v and GND pins have made love with sparkles.

Symptoms:

– 2v on 5v pin
– power led on half brightness (I like to call it ‘sad led’)
– arduino perfectly works with external power (VIN pins)

Diagnosis:

– Your D1 diode is dead (sorry!)

Good solution:

– replace the diode with an equivalent  MBR0520LT1 0.5A 20V schottky diode
(but maybe they will ask you 5 cent for the component and 13 euros for shipping…)

Rude solution:

– remove the diode and close the circuit

ATTENTION: your usb port will be not anymore protected, which means you could burn your computer usb port, if something bad happens!

As you can see from the first photograph in the post, I didn’t have the time to find an equivalent diode…

Here some pictures to clarify.

Diode MBR0520LT1

Diode in position (inside circle)

Diode in position (inside circle)