M1 Motor leads shorted together 2x15

[SouthernAtHeart]

My motor leads are going to be about a foot long, so I took a 3' piece of wire, doubled it in half, and twisted them together nicely, to help reduce noise, and hooked the ends up to my controller. Then some time passed due to interruptions and when I came back, I forgot I hadn't finished hooking up the motor side of these wires, so the were shorted together, since it's all one wire that I started with. I powered up my roboclaw 2x15, and it gave me an error light blinking. I looked it up in the manual and found it meant "Error LED blinking twice. STAT1 or STAT2 indicates channel." In my case M1. So I then remembered I hadn't finished hooking of the motor. I knew it wasn't hooked up, but I forgot the motor leads were the same wire, and thus shorted together). Saw I thought, oh, that's no big deal, I just turned off the power, and cut the end of my wires, so they were shorted out.
Then, when I plugged it back in I expected the error to be gone, but instead, the roboclaw started smoking! I quickly unplugged it. There is nothing connected except the power, and the motor leads, which aren't connected to anything.

...so did having M1 and M2 shorted together ruin my roboclaw or was it defective to begin with? I thought it had over current protection. Furthermore, I wasn't even giving it any commands to run the motor.

Please advise.

thanks.

[Basicmicro Support]

I beleive I talked with you yesterday. Based on what you said then and in this post we arent certain what caused the problem, though shorting the motor wires together is never a good idea. I beleive you are sending the board in. Based on the description the repair should be simple(no significant damage was done to the pcb).

[SouthernAtHeart]

Yes, thanks. I've added (2) 12 vdc lead acid batteries, about a foot from the controller, to take care of regenitive issues, and the inductive from the 16' leads from the power supply. (That can't be shortened as it comes through a cable chain).

[Basicmicro Support]

That should be ok. Th ebatteries for the most part will be providing the power and handling the Regen and the Power supply will basically keep the batteries topped up.