“First Light”
Whenever I power something up (fo’ realz) for the first time, I think of it as “first light” ... the first in situ test, the machine running on its own power supply. Astronomers use the phrase for similar situations as telescopes come online. I like to think that laser operators do too.
In this case, on first power-up, three of my Arduino Pro Minis caught fire. First light, indeed!
Ok, that’s overstating it a bit: I powered the channels up one at a time; three worked fine, one let out the magic smoke, and only two outright caught fire. Clearly a bad batch of $1.80/ea Arduino Pro Minis.
If I’m being honest with myself, I would admit that I should stop buying cloned Chinese parts on eBay from the lowest cost suppliers. (I mean, really: in full reel quantities, Mouser charges $1.71/unit for just the atmega328p-aur. Does the extra $0.10/unit cover the board, jellybeans, assembly, listing, and shipping/fees? Clearly corners are being cut everywhere.)
At the same time, I’m not sure how this insane project could get funded without cut-rate parts and dodgy suppliers. And sometimes self-honesty just needs to shut the hell up for a while.
And, as for pic related: here’s me putting pins on another 10 Arduinos, three of which worked fine this morning. But all of which will be sitting in a spares bin on The Big Day. Maybe a fire extinguisher, too.