Another fault that might have cost you 45€. you where building the circuit when your mbed suddenly stopped working ??
You should never start building external hw when your mbed is already connected to an unfinished circuit.
You should always finish it and test the working of your hardware with some wires directly from ground and Vcc. Measure it and check if it works like it's supposed to work before you connect your mbed !!! If you make a mistake you could blow up your inexpensive tor or other hardware instead of your costly mbed. So what ... you take a fresh one and continue with what your where doing. No harm done. You will learn from that mistake. Experience is the sum of all your mistakes ...
In my schematic you should see something like 5mA of current flowing trough the led and 3.3mA trough the base resistor of your transistor. You can safely measure such a small current directly with your multimeter. Any diehard electronic guy will tell you this is not done. you measure the resistance, the voltage across and you calculate the current. I know that!
But i don't know you skill level in electronics so do as i say and measure any current < 90mA directly with the meter.
A transistor normally has @ least a B factor of 100 (A types). Normal used hand rule for a small signal tor in switching mode: Ib=1mA with will +/- result in an Ic switching current of minimum 100mA. I guess your relay needs 50mA to function properly? So you can change the 1K base in my schematic with 3K3. It is even better than 1K. if you would like 20mA for the led you could lower that R To 270 if you like. Total P tor(on) is Ic MAX 70mA * 0.4Vce = 28mW <= 100mW Ptor MAX. So you are in the safe zone and it will work perfect! No cooling required.
Keep in mind that you still are very lucky because usb ports are CC protected to 500mA as it's used as "high power" device.
If this wasn't the case you could have damaged your computer. that is why your mbed doesn't get warm on usb and starts to heat up with an unprotected power supply who can deliver your Short circuit current!
Greets,
Tom
HI MY mbed doesnt turn on anymore :S. I bealive it was due to shortcircuit, if so, or if u have other options of what could have happened to my mbed, I would like to know how to fix it :S.
It doesn turn on neither usb connected nor Power supply connected.