“I was trying to figure out why this 3-way adapter produced half-wave rectified DC in opposite polarities on the “low” and “medium” setting when my scope ground touched one of the wires and let the smoke out. The blown component appears to be a “quadrac” (combined diac and triac in a single package) in an old TO-105 case. The circuit seems to just put a diode in a series for “low” and a diode going the other way with a non-adjustable triac dimmer in parallel for “medium”.”
Make a robot friend with Adafruit’s CRICKIT – A Creative Robotics & Interactive Construction Kit. It’s an add-on to our popular Circuit Playground Express, FEATHER and other platforms to make and program robots with CircuitPython, MakeCode, and Arduino. Start controlling motors, servos, solenoids. You also get signal pins, capacitive touch sensors, a NeoPixel driver and amplified speaker output. It complements & extends your boards so you can still use all the goodies on the microcontroller, now you have a robotics playground as well.
