Not very likely, I have projects with Arduino running way faster. It only triggers the motor drivers, there is no motor current in the Arduino.
At a load above 40mA you will fry an output and can be lucky if the rest keeps working. In order to heat it up you should have some mA running through the processor without reaching the limits.
I suggest you take the offer Zach made you and let Inventables sort things out.
The Arduinos use a linear regulator and they can get hot. Is it powered by USB?.
The design of the gshield is wrong with respects to cooling. The chips that get really hot dissipate heat on the bottom through a pad on the circuit board. Without any way of letting this heat escape it will build up.
They should have made a thermal transfer using a heat-sink with part of the board that has the IC drivers not over the arduino.
If you want to improve the heat exchange and keep the unit cooler then a fan is a start.
Would would help better is using the heat sink on top of the chip as suggested above. I have also mentioned this in another thread a wile ago.
Any time you have more than 500 ma you should consider heat.
Heat is the enemy as it will cause thermal runaway.
Ok, after a little mix up at the inventables shipping department (they sent me a g shield instead of the arduino but itâs all good) I received my arduino.
Plugged in back in EXACTLY the same wayâŚand wa la!!!
NO MORE HEAT OR FEAR OF AN ELECTRICAL FIRE!!!
Donât know what or how the other arduino got screwed up, but it was definitely NOT normal.
The new arduino is cool as a cucumber.
Thanks @Zach_Kaplan @GriffinDennis for taking care of me, you guys always do and thatâs why I canât speak more highly than you guys and your customer service. Keeps me coming back for more.
Iâm glad to hear this got resolved!
