Asked
— Edited
Sometimes when designing different robots to interface with the EZB(4). Consideration must be given to whether additional fuse protection may be needed or required.
If the EZB(4) is taken out of its housing then the fuse protection is left within the plastic shell. When connecting your choice of power to the now non-fused EZB(4) here is an option that can be built to protect your circuits. It is fairly easy to build and does not take up much space which is a good thing in the land of robots.
It consists of connecting Mini Deans connectors and soldering mini blade fuses of the amperage of your choice. The example pictured shows a 5 Amp fuse being used. And just a little red heat shrink tubing was also added.
Thanks @Robot-Doc it never hurts to have a little extra fuse protection
Cool idea!
I always use spade crimps (the female ones). Blade fuses fit these nicely.
By the way @Jeremie,
What fuse did you end up using on the EZ-B v4? A polyfuse/ptc or a regular old melting fuse?
Edit: never mind, it says resettable fuse in the shop so I'm guessing that's a polyfuse.
Does the V4 have polarity protection? I was thinking of putting a diode in the power line on my dev kit to make sure I never hook it up backwards and see magic blue smoke (I know some people lost V3s that way).
Alan
Yep the ez-bv4 has a reverse polarity protection diode, resettable polyfuse, and in the power base/robot bodies there's a 20Amp mini-blade fuse as well.
I'm a big fan of fusing circuits. It's saved my butt (and the robot) many times because sometimes I get in a hurry or don't think things through. Then bad things happen. The only time I don't fuse is with some motor controllers like a Sabertooth. They don't recommend fusing the controller but to fuse the motor.
Nice work Doc! Thanks for sharing your genius.
Would it be possible to replace the fuse with a circuit breaker?
If you find a circuit breaker that is low power enough to properly lockout, then I don't see why not.