Burning IR sensors
 

The IR sensors provided with the kit of parts seem to fry easily. So far the only heat I’ve applied to the sensors is soldering and the +5v from the controller. Is this a problem for any other teams? Any advice/help would be appreciated.

Re: Burning IR sensors
 

You might check this thread: http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...ad.php?t=24773

Re: Burning IR sensors
 

Are you attaching a heat sink between the soldering and the chip?
We lost one to soldering that way when a student tried it before being instructed in soldering techniques.

Re: Burning IR sensors
 

No, I did not attach a heat sink to the sensors, but instead of soldering on wires to the pins we did our own circuit board to reverse the positive voltage and ground voltage supply. (If i'm not mistaken that would require less heat)
I am fairly certain that the problem is not with the soldering. We had a fully functional prototype, but now, after lots of test, it's not functional. So my question is about hooking these sensors directly to 5V.

Re: Burning IR sensors
 

Remember that there was an error in the early docs that had the FET in backward.

Re: Burning IR sensors
 

We originally hooked all the IR sensors up directly to the 5v supply from the controller to check them out and have been running them for a few weeks on the interrupt 5v and haven't encountered any problems.

We have burned them out by shorting them, hooking them up incorrectly, using a soldering iron > 20watts w/o a heat sink, etc. That's why we purchased spares for the students to practic on. (They've (and mentors) have gotten much better.