Short answer: almost never. Getting a circuit wrong is how anyone learns circuits, and the kit is built for exactly that. A wrong connection nearly always means nothing happens, which is information rather than damage. There is one real exception and it is at the bottom of this page.
Things that are safe to get wrong
- An LED in backwards. It just does not light. Turn it around and it works.
- A motor in backwards. It runs the other way. Handy to know when a build goes in reverse.
- Red and black Wire Blocks swapped. No effect at all. The colours are there to help you read your own build, they do not change the circuit.
- Blocks stacked in the wrong order. Usually nothing happens, and rearranging them is the whole exercise.
- The speaker connected straight to the battery. You get a crackle and nothing else. That is the speaker behaving correctly, not breaking: it needs the Siren IC to make a sound.
- A short build that suddenly stops working. Far more often a seating problem than damage. My LED, motor or block isn't working walks through it.
Take a wrong result as a clue about the circuit and try the next thing. That is the point of the kit.
The one real exception: transistor blocks
Everything on this page is safe to get wrong except one thing: a transistor block wired backwards while plugged into a charging battery.
The first production run shipped the Expansion Kit's transistors without polarity protection and without internal current limiting. Reverse the polarity while the battery is charging and too much current can flow through the block, which heats it up and can permanently damage it. You may notice a burning plastic smell.
If that happens, stop using that transistor block, take it out, and do not put it back. There is no risk to the other parts, and the rest of your kit carries on as normal. Write to us and we will replace it free.
We are not asking you to tiptoe around the transistors. Line up + with + before you connect the battery and you will be fine.
Physical wear is a different question
The things that actually break on these kits tend to be mechanical rather than electrical:
- A gold spring pin that stops springing back.
- A metal tip snapping off a jumper wire.
- An IC block separating into two halves.
None of that is caused by wiring a circuit wrongly, and none of it is something you need to prevent by building cautiously. When it happens, tell us.
If a block ever gets hot
Unplug the USB-C cable, take the Battery Block out of the circuit, and set the hot block aside until it cools. Then write to us and tell us which block it was and what the circuit looked like. Do not put it back into a build in the meantime.
Related
- First production run notes: /pages/info.
- Known behaviours that look like faults but are not, including the potentiometer's small effective range and the sticky 1x2 pins.
