Another repair attempt- this time for our out of warranty and out of support solar monitoring system that’s been stuck on “Starting Application” for a year now..
Debugging stuck SunPower SolarBridge
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Category Archives: Teardowns
Philips Sonicare HX681A
Seven years after the last teardown, we once again have an electric toothbrush that failed. Oddly enough the failure mode was exactly the same- top seal breaks, water gets inside, things corrode and battery discharges. This one was a week before the end of the warranty, so Philips was nice enough to send a new one.
TI’s Little Professor
Casio personal-mini teardown in pictures
Optical mouse, the old way
Today’s topic is somewhat unique- a vintage optical mouse, made in the days when it was not very trivial. It’s not like you can just slap a camera in and have it take pictures to figure out where things move. In the old days you had to actually design it, maybe even using some 2N3906 and 555 timers as we’ll find out. Let’s start with unboxing (pardon the masking tape holding things together)
Vintage find
FrankenPad part deux
Hot on the heels of a touchpad swap in my “new” Thinkpad T440P, come the next two upgrades: backlit keyboard and an IPS display. I shall call this machine Frankenpad as it’s rapidly deviating from the original configuration (20AWS series).
What can we learn from simple things?
Today’s post is a bit of a challenge to myself- what (if anything ) can be learned from analyzing a simple thing like a garage opener button wall button?
It’s a button, what can there be to learn?
Micronta 22-191 multimeter teardown
And here is the second part of the $1 multimeter deal from the last Hamfest. Together with Micronta 22-201U analog meter reviewed here I picked up this 3.5 digit digital one of a similar age. The poor thing looks like it had a rather difficult life!
Updated 11/2016
A $1 hamfest multimeter teardown: Micronta 22-201U
This one has been sitting since the summer- it took a while to get all the rain to evaporate from the inside! When I grabbed the pour fella, it had water up to the mirror.
$1 takes it!
Watchdog Water Alarm teardown
Today we have a somewhat vintage teardown. Even though you can still buy this Watchdog BWD-HWA Water Alarm in home stores and online, the design itself probably goes quite a few decades back as we’ll see below. We’ll also learn a few things about low power design. Rumor has it these last forever on a nine volt battery!
Front view