Managed to connect 3.7v lithium battery in reverse polarity to pico 2W and didn’t realise until I could smell something hot. Yes the pico board was too hot to touch, disconnected for 5 minutes and tried again correct way. Works Fine. Lucky!
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I have been hammering the pico2w for a while running 10 files with 4 different api calls, including ai and pc bridge for remote control including telegram bot, it never misses a beat 24/7 not sure about bugs some have mentioned. I am super impressed. Just lucky I guess, great product imo.
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That’s a great outcome, Pico 2W is surprisingly resilient!
Reverse polarity accidents are more common than people admit, especially when wiring LiPo cells without a connector. You got lucky, the RP2350’s onboard regulators have some tolerance, but sustained reverse voltage usually kills the chip.
A small tip for anyone reading: adding a 1N5817 Schottky diode in series with your battery positive line gives cheap, passive reverse polarity protection with minimal voltage drop. Alternatively, a P-channel MOSFET circuit is even cleaner for battery-powered builds.
Good reminder to always double-check polarity before powering up, glad your Pico survived!
Just a side note… I like to keep a log if known bad things happen, like this.
While it may work now, it also may have degraded something that may fail later. And if that happens, you may think “nothing happened, it just stopped”; as by then you have forgotten about this bad thing.
Hi Anthony and all concerned people
Please heed Michael’s post above. That is very true.
Most damage to electronic bits are cumulative. That is a major event (like reverse supply connection) may happen now and more very minor events will sit on top of it until down stream (which could be measured in months or even years) something will give up and problems will start to occur.
This will have all the indications of being caused by the latest event but will all have been started by some forgotten happening in the past.
If you have lots of bits laying around Michael’s idea of an “event log” is a good one and could save lots of headaches in the long run.
With my personal situationI don’t have much of this these days and if I had that item that had been subject to reverse voltage I would discard it as being unreliable. I have had experience with the headaches such items along with suspect test leads etc can cause and learned the value of the old rubbish bin many years ago..
Cheers Bob
Good advice thanks. Will heed
