Need help with curcuits for 5.1 wireless surround system

When you say "burned through" do you mean you can see burn marks as if something got hot?

From what you're describing it sounds like a short circuit. The ADAU 1401/1701 chips are 3.3V power, not 5V. I don't have Matt's drawings though and it's quite possible that 5V is the correct supply voltage.

Might sound like a silly question but how did you hook up your power? That sort of thing can be caused by accidentally connecting the positive and negative terminals the wrong way around and once it's done, it's too late. Most modules have an overload cut-out which will protect the regulator but nothing downstream of it. So if you destroy a board after the converter and it goes short, the short will cause the PSU to shut down until you remove it and when the short is removed, the cutout will reset, usually this is done automatically as the output is constantly monitored.

Can you do some photographs of your set up with particular attention to how everything is hooked up. 

@marcdraco

Thanks for the fast reply!

Unfortunately I can't upload any more attatchments today but I am sure I have not connected anything wrong, since it was all seperatly working. The ADAU input pin sais 5V and the individual DACs and ADCs also run on 5V, so I thought that was right.

The burned stuff I thought because I heared something and saw some smoke but I actually think now, that was just the fluxwater I used sizzling away with power running threw. However one ADAU actually did burn threw I think since it also has burn marks on some condensators but I'll check each bord again later. I think this could have also happened because the DC-DC converter maybe spiked if it failed.

Another suspicion could be the cheap ADCs. Maybe they failed? I had a similar problem with the cheap DACs since they also burned threw but after reading this forum and getting more expensive ones from linkfor from Amazon, they did work chained together.

It may be that you don't have enough posts to post images. We put everyone in a moderation queue for 5 posts to make sure they're not posting anything untoward. This happens a lot behind the scenes and poor Matt has enough to deal with without having to mess around with automated bots advertising everything from those "blue pills" through to spectacles. You can't make it up!

To get your post count up you could perhaps measure the voltage at the regulator while it's connected and see if it drops to zero when it's wired up. I assume you have a basic multimeter or this is going to be nigh-on impossible.

Smoke is never a good sign though. We don't call it "magic smoke" for nothing - it's the in joke for admitting we really got something wrong. Wiring a circuit with the wrong polarity is a sure-fire way to kill transistors and once they go short (which is often the way) they become nothing more than small resistors and get hot - very, very hot enough to make the resin break down and hence the smoke.

Ohh, ok that makes sense, cause I did post some images in my first post and I was wondering, where they went. I did some more testing and am utterly confused to where the fault is.

I put everything together again and by magic it all lit up and worked together in the center channel speaker, so lasers firing, dcdc lit up and ADAU blinked. Nice I thought, so I went to Sigma Studio, connected the USBi with GND, SDA and SCL, it compiled but upon clicking compile download it said compiled: comms failed. So I tried multiple things with this new error but eventually I gave up and unplugged.

Later I plugged it back in the socket and damn, ADAU was dark again :/

I tested some more using all new parts on a surround speaker. I wired up dcdc to 5v then that to ADAU and DAC, connected DAG output to ADAU input and it worked. Then I took my AMP and connected it with power and ADAU output to AMP input, also worked. Then I put everything together into the speaker enclosure and connected the 3 speaker wires and again, ADAU dark. I do know, that the speakers are not the problem, so I am very confused now.

Maybe I am too quick with testing with power and the ADAU/DC-DC have heat protection after soldering the wires? Which is also weird though, since I kept meassuring 5V output from the DC-DC to the ADAU even after the lights were off.

I think the smoked ADAU I have was actually indeed my mistake by accidentally connecting a wire wrong, since no smoke or anything came after my testing just now^^

Sorry, I'm a little unfamiliar with that build. Did you say you're driving speakers with an ADAU1701 module? I'm a little slow today.

The ADAU (we should just call it a DSP which is easier to type, LOL) will get warm when it's executing code but it should never get hot.

The key to any testing is to start in the middle and work out. It's called "divide a conquer" and is the way any professional repair guy will do stuff, unless we know the problem is in a particular module. D&C is about removing half of the issue (the faulty half) and then splitting that into two until it can no longer be subdivided.

Easier said than done with today's LSI.

If you're using a budget programmer (which, if I'm honest, most of us are) it could be the I2C lines are messing up. Keep them as short as practical - duponts are notorious for coming lose or going high impedance and that will mess it all up for you. That's as good as guaranteed.

V2 of the ultimate USB-C mic was sated to use a 1701 some time ago but I've found a lower-cost and simpler solution since that does what we need without costing the earth. Like most of us, I'm time constrained so I've got to play catch-up every time I get new boards back from the fab. 🙂