I fried my Kondo

[Trebor]

I knew that being a novice would catch up to me. Being a complete electronics idiot I toasted my Kondo. While setting up for a night of playing with my robot, I started out by connecting the power supply. I connected the power cord and set Kondo to the side. While booting up my laptop I reached over and pushed the power button on the power supply. A couple of second later I smell smoke and look to my left only to see Kondo with white smoke bailing out of the servos. The power supply was set to 14 volts. I am bummed. I have a gyro on its way. Not to mention I am a few thousand dollars into this, and I may need a set of boards as well as 8 servos.

[Guest]

My goodness! What have you done! It's a terrible lost on your part. I am so sorry to hear that. Let us all be careful next time.

[noDNA]

I personally never use a power supply other than the battery. It is tempting but as you see it is risky to use anything else than 6.x Volts.
The board design of the RCB-1 and accessories is very compact and doesn not take care about security a lot.
There is no complete OFF switch, the board and some accessories are under FULL 6V power, direct line to battery, all the time. Most connectors can be plugged in the wrong way or just one pin to the left or to the right. Once saw my RCB-1 board glowing and fuming at night.

The general procedure is:
DISCONNECT the battery. Connect your servos and additional boards. Double check if everything is plugged in right way and only then reconnect the battery. Charge a second battery with a quick charger while you work with the first battery. I use my (noDNA.com) 1200mAH battery and a 2A quickcharger. Fills it in about 45minutes, works for more than 1 hour. That's always ok.
Take care
noDNA