Christmas is a time to bring joy to others, unless those others are adult siblings. Then it is time to bring joy to nieces and nephews and torment to your siblings for past wrongs, perceived or real. It is in that vein that My Greatest Fix occurred and saved (or ruined) the day by bringing a megaphone back to life.

I am the youngest of three brothers and our middle brother is the only one with children, having two sons aged 7 and 4. Of course, this means that our oldest brother and I take it upon ourselves to provide the kids with the most obnoxiously loud and annoying presents possible and this year was no different. The kids got a megaphone, complete with recording, playback, and siren functions. Upon first opening it, we found it didn't work at all! This being an electronic toy and me being an electronics engineer and the youngest, it was tossed to me with the command of “Fix it”. Knowing cheap electronics are not the most robust and once the magic smoke is gone, it's gone, I was not optimistic.

The kids father (our middle brother) was previously an avionics technician in the Air Force and had a DMM at home since he knew their worth for general home repair and use. It was a Fluke and I was jealous. My own DMM at home is a simple one from Sears I’ve had for over a decade and never replaced because it’s never stopped working. So I grab the DMM, opened the toy megaphone and start probing with a wide eyed 7 year old staring at me.

My nephew had recently seen a cartoon that featured a “lightning stick” and was just grasping the idea of “completing the circuit” to have electricity flow. He was also at a stage where he was in awe of his uncle, being an Engineer, who understood electricity and how “lightning sticks” work. With this in mind, I was showing him how I probed the wires on a continuity setting to see if they were broken or not connected, checked the voltage from the battery pack to the (very few) components to make sure voltage was present, and discovered the switch was not allowing the voltage through it in the On state.

At this stage, after finding the problem I would normally turn it over to my technicians to do the actual work of replacing the faulty component. But there was no way my older brother would act as my technician and take repair instructions from me. So, I gave the simple on/off rotary switch a detailed look and saw that the metal leads were not springing back together when it went from Off to On. I grabbed my specialty pointy tool (DMM probe) and applied some pressure to the reluctant switch leads; broken On is better than broken Off for a brand new toy (though it didn’t break it after all).

And that is how the megaphone was saved and we all got to endure multiple days of a 7 and 4 year old taking turns to scream into a megaphone, record it, and wander the house with it playing on repeat. I don’t know what happened to that toy after we left, only imagining that it mysteriously broke once again…

While it may not have been my most challenging or most needed fix, I like to think that seeing a toy go from broken to fixed reinforced my nephew's interest in science and engineering; that makes it my most memorable fix.

Christmas is a time to bring joy to others, unless those others are adult siblings. Then it is time to bring joy to nieces and nephews and torment to your siblings for past wrongs, perceived or real. It is in that vein that My Greatest Fix occurred and saved (or ruined) the day by bringing a megaphone back to life.

I am the youngest of three brothers and our middle brother is the only one with children, having two sons aged 7 and 4. Of course, this means that our oldest brother and I take it upon ourselves to provide the kids with the most obnoxiously loud and annoying presents possible and this year was no different. The kids got a megaphone, complete with recording, playback, and siren functions. Upon first opening it, we found it didn't work at all! This being an electronic toy and me being an electronics engineer and the youngest, it was tossed to me with the command of “Fix it”. Knowing cheap electronics are not the most robust and once the magic smoke is gone, it's gone, I was not optimistic.

The kids father (our middle brother) was previously an avionics technician in the Air Force and had a DMM at home since he knew their worth for general home repair and use. It was a Fluke and I was jealous. My own DMM at home is a simple one from Sears I’ve had for over a decade and never replaced because it’s never stopped working. So I grab the DMM, opened the toy megaphone and start probing with a wide eyed 7 year old staring at me.

My nephew had recently seen a cartoon that featured a “lightning stick” and was just grasping the idea of “completing the circuit” to have electricity flow. He was also at a stage where he was in awe of his uncle, being an Engineer, who understood electricity and how “lightning sticks” work. With this in mind, I was showing him how I probed the wires on a continuity setting to see if they were broken or not connected, checked the voltage from the battery pack to the (very few) components to make sure voltage was present, and discovered the switch was not allowing the voltage through it in the On state.

At this stage, after finding the problem I would normally turn it over to my technicians to do the actual work of replacing the faulty component. But there was no way my older brother would act as my technician and take repair instructions from me. So, I gave the simple on/off rotary switch a detailed look and saw that the metal leads were not springing back together when it went from Off to On. I grabbed my specialty pointy tool (DMM probe) and applied some pressure to the reluctant switch leads; broken On is better than broken Off for a brand new toy (though it didn’t break it after all).

And that is how the megaphone was saved and we all got to endure multiple days of a 7 and 4 year old taking turns to scream into a megaphone, record it, and wander the house with it playing on repeat. I don’t know what happened to that toy after we left, only imagining that it mysteriously broke once again…

While it may not have been my most challenging or most needed fix, I like to think that seeing a toy go from broken to fixed reinforced my nephew's interest in science and engineering; that makes it my most memorable fix.

Sounds like a great toy. I wonder where you can get one now?

Dubbie

Amazon, for about $20. Just search for "Megaphone".

After looking at the internal circuitry that allowed record/replay of sound, I'm definitely going to revisit my plans to make a custom "That was easy" button from staples. It seams easier than I initially though it would be.