TalonSRX Fried?

[ImMoMo]

Hello,

While I was prototyping a off-season build, I had two TalonSRX's hooked up to standard 12v motors, I uploaded the code to the roboRIO, tested tank drive, and noticed that one of the motors stopped moving, upon further inspection, I had discover the m- and m+ leads of the Talon had touched..

I used alligator clips for connection testing, but that was really bad idea since they touched....

Anyway, the SRX won't display any lights now, and makes a crackling noise every time I reset the circuit. Is it safe to assume it's fried?

[GeeTwo]

It would certainly be unsafe to assume anything else.

While I'm not familiar with the specific internals of the Talon, putting a dead short on the output of a power amplifier is a death sentence for the amplifier unless there's specific protection designed in to do an immediate cutoff. Snap action breakers are specifically designed not to cutoff immediately, otherwise we'd trip them with the current spike as a DC motor is started up. Those breakers can do a fair job of protecting wires in which heat is generated over a long run, but not the amplifier electronics where power is switched in a small package. Even at that, we have fried several feet of supply-side wire when we shorted motor controller inputs.

[pastelpony]

We did lose a Talon SR to that. I'm not sure how similar the two are, though I wouldn't surprised if it was dead.