Defective Voltage Regulator?

[a8252359]

Hey, I'm having some issues with my Hackvision, it doesn't seem to do anything.
When I plug it in the voltage regulator gets very hot I'm not sure if this is normal behaviour or not but I assume it isn't.\

I read the other posts in this forum and tried a few things you suggested. When I measured the voltage across the part I noticed the from the ground to the output pin it was measuring 0v.

Am I right in thinking I should replace the voltage regulator?

[a8252359]

Mmmmm. Posted in the wrong place -_-.

Sorry.

[Michael]

It could be a bad voltage regulator, but it is most likely a solder short from a pad to the ground plane. The bottom of the board is filled with a ground plane, and sometimes a bit of the black solder mask is burned away accidentally and the copper is exposed. If a solder joint accidentally connects with this ground plane, there is a short.

Make sure that none of your solder joints are accidentally going beyond the solder pad and connecting to the ground plane underneath the black solder mask. Look especially at the solder joints marked in the image below with red circles. Sometimes there is a bit of extra solder that can be removed. Also, if you can take a good, high quality photo of the front and back of the board and post it, I'm happy to have a close look.

Of course, if there's no easy fix I am happy to send you a replacement. Where are you located?

[a8252359]

I'm in Montreal.

I'm going to have a look at it today and see what I can find. I'll get back to you tonight. Thanks a lot. I'm kind of hoping to integrate this into a school project so this is a huuuuuge help.

[a8252359]

Well, I've successfully diagnosed the problem. It appears that I'm not too swift and didn't even consider that I might have put one of the capacitors in backwards. I've got that fixed up but now I think that I probably did fry the voltage regulator because my hackvision still doesn't seem to turn on. I'm going to pick up a replacement and hopefully that will sort it. Thanks for your help!

[Michael]

Ok, thx for the update. These things happen to the best of us! I've made plenty of mistakes like that.

[germandark]

I am having the same issue, I do not see any solder points that appear to be shorted. My C1 cap gets warm slowly then once I can clearly feel a difference in temp it feels to get very hot rapidly. I am going to try to probe it quickly before it gets to hot.

Any ideas?

[Michael]

germandark,
Either the cap is installed backwards or there is a short between GND and the 5V output of the voltage regulator. It's highly unlikely that the voltage regulator is defective, but somewhat likely that there is a soldering short somewhere.

Does the voltage regulator get hot?

With no power applied is there a short between the ground (middle) and 5V (right) pins on the voltage regulator?