THE BOARD IS ON FIRE

Not really, but it kinda is.

After soldering all of the components on with an iron and hot plate, I connected the Pi Pico to the HAT via the female header sockets. I wrote a simple blinky script and verified that it worked when powered by my regular laptop. However, when I powered the KineticBoard HAT with the Pico, the RP2040 chip started smoking and I was able to capture a brief orange glow on camera.

What now??

I’ll have to carefully look at what could have gone wrong. I tested the voltage readings from the multimeter and found that VSYS reads +5.1V when switched on, which makes sense because the Pico can accept that much. I did notice a constant 0.5V on the +3V3 pin for whatever reason (before attaching the pico). I’ll isolate the Pico on a breadboard and attach jumper wires only where needed, and gradually close in on the part that caused the failure.

On a side note, I figured out why one of the LEDs isn’t working. It happens to not be connected to GND; however, everything else seems to be connected just fine.