Some more:
My autonomous updating function is named AUT_DoScaryStuff().
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I am the only person on the controls team that isn't a newbie. The newbies were putting together this year's control board, and (name omitted) said he was finished. As he plugged in the battery, a large spark jumped from the terminal, and nothing powered up. We all got an enormous sinking feeling...but it was time to call it a night, and we left.
At the next meeting, I found myself using a multimeter to check the resistance of each Victor, Spike, and the RC to see if anything was shorted. I re-checked every wire very painstakingly, but found no fault. I tested each Victor with our bench power supply. Still no dice. I looked over the circuit breaker, testing conductivity all the way through. I could not find anything anywhere that would indicate what the heck was going on. Finally, I inspected the battery we were using. The connection seemed okay; red went to the + side of the battery like it should...but what I saw on the other side was quite humorous, though it coaxed a few "bad words" out of me at the time: the Anderson pair that one of the newbies put together had red running into - and black running into +; when it was plugged in, + went to - and - went to +, causing a large amount of current to be drawn, every breaker to pop, and a large spark to jump off the contact when plugged in.
The punchline?
This is the
second time I've done this.
Always, always check the simple things first! Otherwise you'll feel dumb when your problem isn't in fact a bad Victor, but really just a reverse-polarity battery.
--as a side note, I learned that day that Anderson pairs can be taken apart if necessary. You learn something every day, whether you like it or not...
King of reverse-polarity,
JBot