Word count: 1241, reading time approximately: 2 minutesMeasuring multiple times is always better than measuring once. I fell into the pit, and I hope you can avoid it.
I wanted to write an article to demonstrate “how to achieve automation with Raspberry Pi” or some other interesting, curious, or useful applications surrounding Raspberry Pi. As you might realize from the title, I can no longer provide such an article because I destroyed my beloved Raspberry Pi.
The Raspberry Pi is a standard device on every tech enthusiast’s desk. Therefore, there are numerous tutorials and articles telling you what you can do with it. This article, however, covers the dark side: I describe what you should not do!
Cable Colors
Before talking about the actual destruction points, I want to provide some background. When doing electrical work inside and outside the house, you have to deal with different colors of cables. In Germany, every house is connected to a three-phase AC network, and you usually find the following cable colors:
For example, when wiring a lamp, you connect the neutral wire (N, blue) and the live wire (L, which has a 1/3 chance of being brown), with a voltage of 230V AC between them.
Connecting Raspberry Pi
Earlier this year, I wrote an article about OpenWrt, an open-source alternative for home router firmware. In that article, I used a TP-Link router device. However, the initial plan was to use my Raspberry Pi 4.
OpenWrt and Raspberry Pi comparison
My idea was to build a travel router that I could install in my caravan to improve the internet connection at the campsite (I am the kind of camper who cannot live without the internet). To do this, I added a separate USB wireless network card to my Raspberry Pi to connect a second Wifi antenna and installed OpenWrt. Additionally, I added a 12V to 5V DC/DC converter to connect to the 12V wiring in the caravan. I tested this setup with a 12V car battery on the table, and it worked as expected. After everything was set up and configured, I started to install it in my caravan.
In my caravan, I found a blue wire and a brown wire, connected it to the 12V to 5V DC/DC converter, put the fuse back, and…
DC converter device
This chip blew itself up; it was the real step-down transformer. I was very confident that the blue wire was at 0V potential and the brown one was at 12V, and I didn’t even measure it. Later, I learned that the blue wire was at 12V, and the brown wire was grounded (which is common in automotive electronics).
Conclusion
Since this incident, my Raspberry Pi has not started up again. Due to the skyrocketing prices of Raspberry Pi, I had to look for alternatives. Fortunately, I came across a TP-Link travel router that can also run Open-WRT and satisfactorily does its job.
In the end: Measuring multiple times is always better than measuring once.
via: https://opensource.com/article/23/3/how-i-destroyed-my-raspberry-pi
Author: Stephan Avenwedde Topic: lkxed Translator: geekpi Proofreader: wxy
This article is originally compiled by LCTT and honorably presented by Linux China
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