I was trying to implement a communications module for a surface vehicle we are building. The module consists of an antenna, a VLC modem, a 18V battery and the Ethernet switch so we can plug in the VLC modem and the communications antenna into it.
Once I had all wired, I pluggled in the battery and the ethernet switch just burned. I was using the 7-60 V JST GH input. My theory is that there was a high current draw in order to power up the other devices and that caused the switch to burn.
My questions are:
1.- What is the maximum current than the Ethernet switch can support? In the specifications it says that idle power consumption is 300 mW and the max power consumption is 700mW, but is this max power consumption as in “the max power it will draw” or “the max power you can supply into it”.
2.- The part that burned seems to be just a small section of the board (picture attached). Is there any schematic where I can see which is the part that burned and maybe see if its posible that using the 5V input might make the ethernet switch work?
Hi @Alex_UJI1 -
Is there any chance you connected the battery to the 5v input, rather than the battery input? That’s the only thing I can think of that would cause the damage shown…
Inrush current to power other devices should have no affect on the Ethernet switch!
It is not possible. I purposedly took only the “stickers” off the ports I was going to use, in order to avoid confusion. I haven’t touched the 5V port.
It is important to me to know what happened in order to avoid making the same mistake. I have another switch but I am afraid it might burn again if I connect it the same way.
Hi @Alejandro -
That is very strange! The input voltage port is reverse polarity protected, so even if you hooked up power backwards the unit should not have failed. Please use our contact form to “report a problem with the product”, provide an order #, and we’ll work on getting you a replacement! We’ll also likely want the bad hardware back, so that we can attempt to find the root cause. Thanks!
Thanks for your reply. I have a question. These products were bought via a distributor so I do not have the order number, should I contact them and try to do the replacement/return operation via the distributor?
