As you can see a resistor burnt. It litteraly took fire in that power supply.
I’m assuming some capacitor died, hence the bang. Then a resistor burnt. Or the opposite, how could I now?
Let’s move on the fact that on a £100+ device, that’s pure scandal and people should know about the terrible quality of this power supply that should ashame osmc.tv.
My appartment could have burnt because of that resistor. Come on our cat could have die!
Regardless if capacitors are fine or not, that just means that osmc.tv sold us a poorly designed, cheap and dangerous power supply.
I hope this accident did not damage any other device I have.
This is quite serious and doesn’t seem right. We haven’t had reports of issues like this with the PSU in the past, so I’d like to look in to this closely and as a matter of urgency.
Can you please send photos and your order details to support@osmc.tv?
I am currently travelling but will make sure this is picked up immediately
From your photos, I thankfully do not see any damage to your apartment or pets however, just some speculation that this could have hypothetically occurred. The switching mode PSU is fused and designed to ensure that failure is contained to the PSU itself, protecting other peripherals and the environment it is operating in.
The photos do not show the said apartment or pet but no, these are OK.
I do wrote “could”, didn’t I ?
I am very sorry, but having a master degree in engineering and a bachelor degree in electronics, I can assure you that there is nothing that looks even close to a fuse on this PCB.
Capacitors yes, diodes yes, resistors yes, chips yes, transformer yes, but definitely no fuse.
Further more you can always find electronic datasheets online using references. These datasheet are 99% public data. Here reference is “TSL-1681” and Google finds nothing but an obscur Chinese website and the manufacturer did not put its name on the PCB.
In the end, the failing device has not been stopped by itself, it has been stopped due to the abnormal current consumption that my apartment electric board detected at the wall socket.
If you feel the need to check the PCB, you can provide me shipping instructions. I do want to help you going through this problem solving process.
This is appreciated. I have requested further information from you via the support ticket and will provide details so we can get this power supply back for analysing.
i m not gonna make drama in this post, but when you read on the forum , i notice that there are quite some people having problems with the psu that are dying, so maybe its not a bad idea to look for a revisited more safer psu for the osmc team.
especially since its designed for an always on device.
Tom
There are indeed some users that report that they need to replace their power supply after some time. This seems to be a low, consistent failure rate that does not exceed 1% over a 24 month period. This isn’t ideal – and we are looking at ways to improve the power supply’s reliability for the next model as it is the most common problem a Vero user is going to experience over time.
All power supplies will degrade over time however, but should remain safe.
We haven’t however had a report like this before, which is why it’s important to investigate what the issue is.
I assume the easiest / cheapest way would be adding both input and output fuses for the safety part, and to oversize the supply unit itself in order to do not make it work at 100% all the time. Hopefully the cost difference should be very low.
Do you guys know what should be the Vero 4k+'s electrical consumption? Power or expected max current intake?
By the way, i do not know if my Vero4k+ still works and I do not have another power unit that matches the dead one. I’ll have a look into the Vero4k+ and let you know if I see something !
I am one of those customers whose power supply “died”. Vero 4k+ has light but does not completely power on (doesn’t boot or anything besides the red light).
Any “USB charger” can be used to power the Vero through the USB port so maybe that can help you.
An engineer myself, I do understand these problems. In customer electronics it is unlikely there will ever be a 0% failure rate. What counts is that it is designed well (correct isolation distances and a generally safe design) according to safety standards and that quality components are used - that will go a long way to minimize issues. Unfortunately there are plenty of unscrupulous manufacturers out there and vendors really need to be vigilant or make sure someone else confirms the safety for them. There is a huge amount of power supplies in use around the world that fail every safety requirement.
As you say you’re an EE then you probably do know that there is no failure proof capacitors - sometimes they do “just” fail, even in an otherwise safe system. I would not hold OSMC accountable due to a single incidence. But if the power supply design is not safe - then OSMC needs to review their supplier…
Edit: I am a bit concerned that it was your mains MCCB that blew and not something in the wall wart… but still far from unheard of.
Edit2: You say there is no fuse on the board. But there is - the component marked F1 is a fusible resistor.
Sadly i don’t have any USB-A / USB-A cable. I should consider get one…!
Actually it was not the main differential safety, it was the thermal safety dedicated to that rooms’ sockets.
Actually I’m an engineer that have done several years of electronics studies I’m not an electronic profesionnal, just still have some good notions from these years
About the capacitors, none of them seems to have blown up. Perhaps the inner insulation of one of the capacitors has broken?
Shouldn’t the fifth ring be white or silver colored? I’m not very familiar with fusible resistors, but I assume it should break before burning? Anyhow it doesnt seem to be as efficient as a good old fashioned fuse that comes in many shapes colors and tastes
Excuse me, I was assuming too much based on your talk of caps then. But the same applies to any component really. All that can be done is minimize the chance (quality components, quality suppliers (possibility of “fakes”)) and the consequences.
Electronics is not my specialty and it has been several decades since I last decoded resistor rings. But wasn’t fifth one tolerance? I don’t think fusible resistors are detectable through the color coding alone.
Sorry I was supposed to say MCB. English is not my first language. I did not mean the main breaker (MCCB), I meant the “mains” i.e. 110 / 230 V breaker (MCB).
Hi Grahamh, it did start again using male-male USB-A cable I got delevered today! I didn’t think that it would start since the 12V circuit seems out of order. I assume the main 5V circuit is well protected behind the 12V one.
Since it started again, I’ll open it following Sam’s instructions if he wants me to send him some pictures of possible damage that could be visible inside.
Hopefully it will keep working that way!
Thanks everybody!
Edit : I just read on the forum that we should not power a Vero4K+ through its USB ports on a 24/7 basis. What is advised in this case? Thanks ! - T
The power supply that comes with the Vero is 5V, not 12V. Inserting that much voltage into the barrel jack will fry that part of the circuit board.
You can power the device 24/7 through the USB A port as long as you are not using any other devices that have any significant power demand. The issue is that the USB port is only rated for something like half an amp and the Vero needs that by itself if it ramps up the CPU/GPU. If you needed to hook up storage, tuners, or other moderate to high consumption devices you would have to run a powered switch and hang them off of that.
As you connected a 12V PSU, you will have damaged the rail on the barrel side.
You can possibly still power via USB-A.
Regarding your other comments. The PSU is fully compliant with safety standards for our target markets (FCC/CE/UKCA). The PSU is UK fused for BS 1363 standards because of our local ring circuit design.
We take safety seriously and want to get your power supply back to examine. It’s good that there hasn’t been any damage and the failure has been self-contained (which is the intention of the design). We continue to work on improving the peripherals and monitor the supply chain closely to ensure high quality control. We did improve the power supply design over the last year to reduce load and extend longevity. However even older power supplies will be completely safe (just less efficient) and the issue here seems to be an isolated, which we will investigate thoroughly.
I’m not an electronic profesionnal, just still have some good notions from these years 