Murdering ssd1306s

[mortderire]

Hi folks,

(more or less a complete electronics newbie).
I have been playing around with ESP-01's and an ssd1306, for fun.

The ssd1306 is now completely un-responsive - when I connect VCC+GND it gets very hot.
(is this the classic sign the VR is fecked?).

So I have managed to kill it some how.
In this case I haven't done my usual tricks of supplying too much voltage, so it is something else.

I can only conclude that I may have accidentally reversed GND and VCC.
Could this have done it?

Ray K

[amyk]

Don't forget ESD as another cause of such failures.

[mcovington]

Yes.

[mortderire]

Scratch that, it appears to be ok.

 

[atmfjstc]

This reminds me of that time when I discovered I had installed an ATMEGA328 in reverse, which, if you look at the pinout, means VCC and GND will get reversed. Oops. By the time I figured it out, the chip was scorching hot and I was pretty sure I killed it. Since I had soldered it raw (had no socket at hand), extracting it was a pain and it also suffered some pretty scary mechanical abuse in the process.

Turns out, after all that, it still worked like a charm when re-soldered in the proper position (and still does to this day).

Meanwhile, a pristine ATMEGA328 I was storing in the same box and had never seen any action, turned out to be stone cold dead upon testing.

Such are the ways of this Universe...

[mortderire]

LoL

Thinking about this later ...

I had the SSD1306 connected to WeMos D1 mini's SCL, SDA, VCC and GND.
And it worked like a charm.

It was when I connected it to a ESP-01, I connected SSD1306's SCL and SDA to the ESP-01.
I then connected the SSD1306's VCC and GND to the power rail and ground on the breadboard.

This when it got really (really) hot, so I presume it was getting way too much power from the "ywrobot breadboard power supply" I was using.
I was just assuming that the SSD1306 didn't need a resistor on it's GND line - was I in error?

Ray K

[SmokedComponent]

I recommend getting a power supply with current limiting and/or overcurrent protection. Doesn't have to be expensive, networked one, just some which allows you to set maximum current down to tens of milliamps. It's a circuit-saver. Not always, but helps a lot of times; especially overcurrent protection, which turns off the output immediately rather than just lowering voltage.
Even if you've been doing electronics for a while, it is easy to accidentally short something out on a breadboard.