Help please, R.Pi 3 Model B+ no longer working...

[AndyLane]

My 10 year old believes that he has ruined his Raspberry Pi 3 Model B+ and I was hoping that someone might be able to help.
In summary, he attached a wire to one of the GPIO 5v pins in order to form a circuit with the bread board. He thinks the wire also simultaneously touched both the 5v and the 3.5v pins sending 5v through the 3.5v pin into the microprocessor causing irreparable damage.

I’m not convinced that such simple actions could have such a devastating effect but I don’t have the technical knowledge to help or fix the problem and it is causing my son huge distress and anxiety.

The Pi has a red light but no green lights and it is not booting when turned on.

Please help.
Andy (Oisín’s dad)

[pcmanbob]

Hi.

Yes shorting the 3.3V gpio pin to the 5V gpio pin will result in a dead pi.

If you have a volt meter you can carefully test the 3.3V pin to see if 3.3V is still present.

If it's not then you pi is dead and can't be repaired.

See the pi not booting sticky

viewtopic.php?f=28&t=58151

[klricks]

My 10 year old believes that he has ruined his Raspberry Pi 3 Model B+ and I was hoping that someone might be able to help.
In summary, he attached a wire to one of the GPIO 5v pins in order to form a circuit with the bread board. He thinks the wire also simultaneously touched both the 5v and the 3.5v pins sending 5v through the 3.5v pin into the microprocessor causing irreparable damage.

I’m not convinced that such simple actions could have such a devastating effect but I don’t have the technical knowledge to help or fix the problem and it is causing my son huge distress and anxiety.

The Pi has a red light but no green lights and it is not booting when turned on.

Please help.
Andy (Oisín’s dad)

I know a 3B+ can be instantly destroyed by shorting 3V3 to ground BTDT. I believe shorting 5V to 3V3 can have similar results.
If you have a multi-meter then measure the 3V3 (pin 1). You can use the metal on any port shield as a ground connection for the meter.
If ~0V then the RPi 3B+ is irreparably damaged.

[AndyLane]

Wow, I’m amazed.
I thought the Raspberry Pi was aimed at teaching kids about computing and electronics. Seems like it’s extremely fragile and not really suitable for younger less dexterous users.
He will be very disappointed
Thanks for the reply

[IflyRV-12]

I hope your son did learn something.... don't make connections or disconnections on ANY electronics when they are still "hot" or energized. That's the lesson learned, hopefully. Buy your sone a Pi zero wireless to replace and experiment with. $10 won't break the bank for his mistake.

[rpdom]

Wow, I’m amazed.
I thought the Raspberry Pi was aimed at teaching kids about computing and electronics.

It is.

It also teaches them that you can't just poke around and expect things to handle your mistakes for you. Sorry if that seems a bit harsh, but that is the real world of electronics.

[AndyLane]

Yes, that is harsh. He is 10

[rpdom]

Yes, that is harsh. He is 10

I hate to think how much electronics I had broken by the age of 10

The Pi wasn't designed to be indestructible. (It probably would have been scarlet rather than raspberry if it was). It was designed to be affordable. Putting in safety circuits on all pins would have increased the price to a level where it wasn't worth making.

[jbudd]

It is a really bad mistake to come anywhere near the Pi with bare wires, or to plug anything in to it when it's switched on.

You should get some Dupont wires to go with the replacement Pi. They can be plugged in to the wrong pin but they can't easily create a short. Female - Male to connect GPIO to breadboard, Male - Male for breadboard to breadboard.

Get a case too, a bare Pi in the hands of a 10 year old can easily lose vital bits from the PCB or get short circuited by sitting on top of metal objects.

I hope you and he quickly recover from the trauma!

[mahjongg]

My 10 year old believes that he has ruined his Raspberry Pi 3 Model B+ and I was hoping that someone might be able to help.

Your son was right, he did "blow up" his raspberry PI by connecting 5V to the 3.3Volt supply rail.

In electronics there is almost no better way to blow up (irreparably damage) electronics than overvolting them, as transistor circuits designed to work with 3,3Volt can simply not handle a 52% increase in their supply voltage, the absolute maximum voltage they can handle is around 4.0Volt, above which the transistors will "break down" in a very small fraction of a second.

Also, the GPIO inputs are not "5V tolerant" either, which is a well known fact.

These facts are just as important "facts of life" as any other educational fact you can learn from using a raspberry PI computer.

[Burngate]

Let him learn - hit him where it hurts - tell him you'll match whatever he can save up, so long as he doesn't do the same again.

How much a week pocket money does he get? At 10, I was getting half-a-crown, so it'd take a fair while to save up for a new one.
And Christmas is coming -he might be lucky.

[hippy]

He thinks the wire also simultaneously touched both the 5v and the 3.5v pins sending 5v through the 3.5v pin into the microprocessor causing irreparable damage.

Shorting 5V to 3V3 has likely damaged the Power Management IC (PMIC) which is why it no longer works.

The 'microcontroller' (SoC) may have survived and might work again if the PMIC were replaced but that is not a feasible proposition except for a tiny minority.

Seems like it’s extremely fragile and not really suitable for younger less dexterous users.

Earlier Pi models with discrete power supply regulators and polyfuse protection are less fragile, more robust, more likely to survive power rail shorts. Those are what I recommend for experimenting with electronics. They are not indestructible but are cheaper to replace second-hand if they do get destroyed or damaged.