Pixhawk Bricked?

Hi All,

My senior design team was running some tests yesterday, using a Pixhawk 4. Had two 3S batteries in series connected to this power module which was powering out FC and then it was connected to this PDB. We were using ESCs and motors from this kit. Long story short, we were doing a test and the ESC caught on fire. We immediately disarmed, it, took the battery off and stored it in a Lipo Bag, put the fire out, and disconnected the ESC from the rest of the system. We think the ESC might have just been bad quality, so we ordered some new ones. But our Pixhawk is bricked. Last night it wasn’t showing any sign of life when plugged in, and today a solid green light came on when it was plugged in but no flashing and no sounds. Also, we removed the board from the casing and a few components on the backside are fried, one is busted in two. Can anyone take a look at these pictures and tell me what went wrong, please?

My PC won’t detect the pixhawk, so I can’t recover a log or anything. Thanks in advance.

The MCU looks fried too at the top corner… .
I guess the ESC did connect the Pixhawk to full lipo voltage when it failed. If the MCU is fried too, the Pixhawk is beyond repair. Anyway, I would not trust it to control anything (a slow rover perhaps), even if it was repaired.

If you want protection from this you can attach externally a big 5V transzorb on two free pins on the servos connector. On the reference Pixhawk design there are PESD0402 diodes as transient suppressors, that won’t protect from this.
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