> On Dec 15, 2015, at 9:44 PM, Morgan Redfield <[email protected]> wrote:
> 
> Thanks John,
> 
> I hear you on the ceramic capacitors. I'll be switching those out tomorrow. 
> For now I wanted to get an idea of what the power rail looked like with the 
> current setup, so I could see if there was anything else that may obviously 
> be contributing to the burned out BBBs that I have.
> 
> I'm not sure I understand what you're saying about the probe though. Are you 
> suggesting to shorten the ground wire coming off the oscope probe itself? 
> When you say to short the ground to the probe tip and place it near the 
> switcher, is this to use the ground wire of the probe as an antenna?

What I’m recommending is to avoid any antenna pickup by the probe. If you are 
using a regular probe, then you should probably use something like this:

http://www.cliftonlaboratories.com/july_2007.htm 
<http://www.cliftonlaboratories.com/july_2007.htm>

Scroll down to about half way "Tektronix P6106 probe with sleeve removed and 
grounding clip in place.”

That is what I mean by keeping the ground line short. To diagnose your problem, 
you must start with measurements that you can trust. What is the bandwidth of 
your scope?

Regards,
John
> 
> Best,
> Morgan
> 
> On Tue, Dec 15, 2015 at 9:35 PM, John Syne <[email protected] 
> <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
> When measuring with an oscilloscope, keep the probe as short as possible. For 
> example, short the ground to the probe tip and place the probe near the 
> switcher. If you still see the switching spikes, then your probe ia too long. 
> A ground wire of 3 or 4 inches is too long. As I said before, electrolytic 
> capacitors are no good for switchers because their ESR is way too high. 
> Ceramic capacitors with a low ESR will clean up your power supply noise and 
> make a big difference. Even tantalum capacitors are no good for switchers 
> generally speaking. If you look at most vendor reference designs, they always 
> use ceramic capacitors. In fact, some switchers won’t work unless you use 
> ceramic capacitors. 
> 
> Regards,
> John
> 
> 
> 
> 
>> On Dec 15, 2015, at 9:04 PM, Morgan Redfield <[email protected] 
>> <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
>> 
>> Hi everyone,
>> 
>> I probed the 5V line of my setup today, with and without a BBB attached to 
>> my cape.
>> 
>> With no BBB attached, the unloaded startup looks like this:
>> <BenchSupplyUnloadedStartup.bmp>
>> There's considerable noise here, but it doesn't seem to exceed the limits of 
>> the TPS65217.
>> 
>> 
>> When the BBB is connected to the cape, startup looks like this:
>> ​<WallWartLoadedStartup.bmp>
>> 
>> 
>> So I don't think the issue is with startup transients.
>> 
>> During normal operation, the 5V rails looks like this:
>> <LoadedNoise.bmp>
>> There are 200mV spikes at 150kHz due to the switcher. I haven't seen those 
>> spikes much larger than 200mV, but if they were then I could see them 
>> damaging the TPS65217.
>> 
>> The capacitors I've been using on my power supply are electrolytic. I can 
>> add some ceramic capacitors as well.
>> 
>> Does this all make sense? Any other ideas for what may have happened to my 
>> BBBs?
>> 
>> Thanks,
>> Morgan
>> 
>> On Mon, Dec 14, 2015 at 8:44 PM, John Syne <[email protected] 
>> <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
>> What is the part number for C2/C13? I would recommend ceramic with a low 
>> ESR. Tantalum for Electrolytic will have a higher ESR and will not be 
>> suitable as you will see considerable ripple/spikes. Regarding the relays, 
>> without the diodes, it will only affect the transistors and not the power 
>> supply. You want a diode across the relay to prevent the transistor 
>> collector voltage from rising above the relay supply voltage. When the relay 
>> switches off, the reverse EMF will cause the voltage on the transistor to 
>> exceed the relay supply voltage and potentially damage the transistor. With 
>> the diode, the energy from the reverse EMF will be dumped into the relay 
>> supply. If you have low EMF ceramic capacitors across the relay supply, the 
>> supply will remain clean. 
>> 
>> Regards,
>> John
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>>> On Dec 14, 2015, at 4:57 PM, Morgan Redfield <[email protected] 
>>> <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
>>> 
>>> Thanks for the advice, guys.
>>> 
>>> I actually had a couple of relays attached to this without flyback diodes, 
>>> so that may be causing voltage spikes on the 5V input line.
>>> 
>>> I'll take a look at the un-loaded startup of my regulator tomorrow and see 
>>> how it looks.
>>> 
>>> The regulator portion of the schematic is:
>>> <image.png>
>>> 
>>> Best,
>>> Morgan
>>> 
>>> On Fri, Dec 11, 2015 at 9:15 PM, Graham <[email protected] 
>>> <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
>>> Morgan:
>>> 
>>> It is likely a transient voltage spike that can come out of your switcher.
>>> 
>>> The BBB does not turn on it's power supply until it thinks the incoming 
>>> voltage is stable, which means that your 12V to 5V switcher is starting up 
>>> without a load.  If it overshoots badly in that start-up period, it could 
>>> kill something. Or if it overshoots when the BBB load is finally applied
>>> 
>>> I would start by repetitively starting up your 12V to 5V switcher, without 
>>> a load on it, and watching what the output does on a storage (memory) 
>>> oscilloscope, so that you can see the worst case startup condition. Then 
>>> repetitively add a load equal to the BBB and all its input capacitance, and 
>>> watch what happens.
>>> 
>>> What were you controlling with the BBB/Cape?  Things like relays or stepper 
>>> motors generate inductive spikes that can easily kill semiconductors, if 
>>> the spikes are not managed correctly.
>>> 
>>> --- Graham
>>> 
>>> ==
>>> 
>>> 
>>> On Friday, December 11, 2015 at 7:14:38 PM UTC-6, Morgan Redfield wrote:
>>> I think I managed to burn out the TPS65217 on the BBB using a custom cape 
>>> that I designed. The cape has a DCDC switching regulator that I'm using to 
>>> drop a 12V supply down to 5V for the beagle bone. I have the 5V from that 
>>> switching regulator connected to pins P9.6 and P9.5.
>>> 
>>> I've now had two BBBs fail while powering them from the board. I left both 
>>> on for a couple of days, and at some point the BBB just died. After that, 
>>> the BBB don't boot at all, even with the cape unplugged.
>>> 
>>> When I apply 5V from a benchtop supply to P9.6, I only see 1.1V on P9.7 
>>> (system 5V). 
>>> If I hit the power button (S3), then the voltage on P9.7 will jump up to 
>>> around 2.5V before falling back to 1.1V over around 20s.
>>> 
>>> I'm not sure what's going on here, since the power supply I'm using looks 
>>> pretty clean to me. It's an average of 5.14V with max 150mVpp noise. It's 
>>> rated to 2A current draw. Switching frequency is 150kHz. 
>>> 
>>> Does anyone have any idea what might be happening here? Any ideas about 
>>> what I should try next?
>>> 
>>> Thanks,
>>> Morgan
>>> 
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