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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Frigidaire GLMV169 Microwave repair
It’s been a while since something broke, but that never lasts around here. This time our circa 2005 microwave decided to scare us. It started randomly staying on after the door was opened upon cycle completion. That was especially scary since it was hard to tell what exactly stayed on just by the noise.
Warning: Microwaves have lethal voltages inside, always unplug power when working on them. Proceed at your own risk.
Continue readingNissan Leaf on FLIR!
I happened to have a FLIR E5 camera to play with for a few days, so naturally I wanted to see what my car looks like in IR. It was a cold day (14F /-10C) with heavy snow, and the front of the car looked like a giant snowball after my commute.
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.
Nissan Leaf “Service EV system Error”
Houston, we have a problem! This message greeted me one day when I turned the car on . Everything turned on except the loud clunk of HV contactor was missing. Considering the car had 8k miles, that was “exciting”..
Nissan Leaf Strut towers
As some of you may know, my daily driver is a second gen Nissan Leaf. The car, like all EVs is awesome, but has an interesting quirk, apparently dating back to Nissan Versa days. For some mysterious reason, the drain hole under the drivers side windshield wiper sits right above the strut tower. So any water that drips there ends up sloshing around in a nice cup on top of it. Can’t wrap my mind around this one- why? Reading around the forums, it appears that after the early Leafs had the top of the strut corrode to the point of failure. Nissan changed the hardware to stainless but did not do anything to eliminate the cause.
After checking my own car after a rain, it was clear I needed to do something.
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
Nexus 5 power switch replacement
Another older repair I am getting around to post. This time it’s a Nexus 5 phone that acquired an interesting habit of getting stuck in a random reboot loop. One moment it’s working fine, next it’s stuck in a boot screen with Google logo, then buzzes and reboots to the same thing. After a bit of Googling around, I realized that the likely culprit is a power button getting stuck. To confirm, I’d smack it a bit and watch the phone exit reboot loop and work for a while. That smacking was satisfying but not sustainable if I wanted the thing to survive. So back to ebay we go. I suppose Mouser/Digikey were also an option if I felt like desoldering the original, measuring it and then combing through all similar parts to find the fit. Instead I let other people do that. Most sellers had an exact replacement switch, but one claimed a new and improved one. It also looked a bit better so for $2 shipped I grabbed one. The typical title for these is “4mm Power On /Off Volume Switch Button For LG Nexus 5 D820 D821 Optimus L4 E440”.
Tiny thing