What internal protection does the QC power supply have?

How protected is the Quad Cortex from power supply input mistakes?

In other words:

  1. what if a supply is used and the polarity is backwards?
  2. what if a supply is used and it can’t supply all the current needed?
  3. What if #2 happened and the voltage sagged below 12V?
  4. What if a supply is used that is over 12VDC?

Let me be clear, i have no intention of doing any of the above.

I was just wondering how much electrical engineering design had been done to protect the precious DSP’s and analog components inside if a bonehead mistake was made with the external supplying of power?

Hey @wordless!

We will always hope a user will use the correct supply of course but we do have reverse polarity protection and over-voltage protection to prevent users from killing their QC.

A power supply that’s under 12V won’t do any harm to the QC but, it won’t work as expected obviously.
Lower voltages could put some additional strain on the system and it’s not advised obviously.

An accidental connection to the wrong power supply should be safe enough short-term but the longer the unit is run with the wrong supply, the higher the chance of any damage occurring. The damage won’t be to the previous DSPs though :slightly_smiling_face:, we keep them nice and safe!

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