Power logger went up in smoke this morning. Why?

[milonesmith]

Hi All

I purchased a powerlog from hobby king recently. I tried plugging it into a single pack via the balance cable and it powered up, showing voltages for each cell (6S). This I had done a few times over the last week to check balance.

Last night I finally got around to adding plugs to the main power connector on the powerlog. I then tested last night with a somewhat run down pack (12S) which showed 47V roughly.

All seemed good and I was eager this morning to put it inline with my pack for the ride to work.

I went to plug the powerlog in series with my pack this morning and it smoked!

At the risk of biasing the conversation, the most obvious difference from my perspective between the test last night and the smoke this morning is that the pack was charged to around 52V.

The hobby king manual indicates that it should be good to 60V so I think there was headroom on pack voltage.

I'm attaching a photo in case someone knows enough about the unit to spot what portion of the board burned out.

I have electrical engineering background so I am sure I can figure it out, but any help you can lend or suggestions/observations are much appreciated.

link to product:
http://www.hobbyking.com/hobbyking/store/uh_viewItem.asp?idProduct=15941

link to what I think is the same product:
http://www.progressiverc.com/index.php/powerlog-6s.html

Actually anyone know if the hobby king one is a copy or the same?

 

[auraslip]

Individual Lipoly Cell Monitor up to 6s

I burnt up a cell-logger doing much the same thing; by connecting more than 6s at a time.
Let me know how you fix it because I want to fix mine!

 

[milonesmith]

Well for now I am not planning to fix it. I am more interested in understanding what happened.

 

[Ykick]

Did you have either brick 6S balance tap connected when you connected 12S power leads?

 

[heathyoung]

Looks like you flambéd the voltage reg. Oops.