New to electronics - following kit example for the shift register but caused omega2+ crash/power-cycle

chooks

Hi There,

The forum doesn't seem very active, but throwing this out there just in case...

I am new to electronics and picked up an Omega2+ makers kit to try to learn some basics with an eye towards some home automation eventually. The Omega2+ is super neat and its been fun to play with so far.

I am working through the kit examples with the shift register tutorial at https://docs.onion.io/omega2-maker-kit/starter-kit-using-shift-register.html. All is good with it until I get to the the final wiring instructions that says:

Connecting your Omega to the Shift Register

Connect the GND pin on the Expansion Dock to the Vcc rail.
Connect GPIO1 to SER (pin 14).
Connect GPIO2 to SRCLK (pin 11).
Connect GPIO3 to RCLK (pin 12).
Connect the 3.3V pin on the Expansion Dock to the ground rail.

It didn't make a lot of sense to connect GND to Vcc and the 3.3 GPIO to the ground rail. But what do I know? I made the connect and it crashed the Omega2+ (power cycled). All the other wiring looked ok as far as I could tell. So.. I switched the wires (which seemed to make more sense with 3.3V GPUO going to Vcc and ground going to ground) and the Omega2+ doesn't crash, but the code for the shift register has no effect.

Looking for some help guidance on how to approach this:

Are the original wiring instructions correct (Vcc->ground, GND->3.3V) and I just had something wrong in my wiring that I missed that presumably shorted something? That direction didn't seem to make sense given the circuit diagram in the example which has Vcc going to voltage but am a beginner so not sure if I am reading things correctly.
Since I powered it in both directions (one of which being wrong by definition) what is the best way to tell if I fried the chip?
Is there something else I am missing?

Sorry this is so basic and appreciate any advice or direction.