An IDS ueye USB camera.  Was knocked so the USB port had come off and detracked the board.  It was fun tracing the circuit, replacing tracks with narrow gauge wire.  Real sence of achievement when after the second attempt the computer recognised it.  Some epoxy and screws later it was back in the system running until a replacement could be sourced.

I just NEED proper Tools ~ Have always Wanted a Solid Soldering iron . Currently going through a Miller 211 welder that will most likely need a component or 2 pulled and resoldered. Has Stopped me from other projects as well. Have a Good One

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.

I actully have two stories of something that I fixed when I was in my electronics program in high school.

My instructor had me look at a TV that the librarian brought in to look at. They had replaced an SCR in it, but the TV wouldn't fire up unless you shorted the case of the SCR. No one could figure out what the issue was including the instructor who had been a TV repair man before becoming a teacher. I started pouring over the schematics and started testing everything leading up to the SCR. Everything was checking out when the TV was running. So I decided I would unsolder some of the components leading to the SCR and test them out of circuit. I unsoldered one electrolytic capacitor and found it had leaked and was pushed up. Visual inspection didn't catch it because it was on the board side of the capacitor. Replaced the cap and it worked normal then.

In the same class we had a guy bring a TV in that was just rolling and no amount of adjusting the horizontal hold would keep it still. When I opened it up, I found the PCB was cracked and that was why it wasn't adjusting. I ended up repairing the PCB by jumping the traces and the TV worked fine after that.

I bought a gaming pc I'd saved months for off ebay, it arrived and wouldn't fire up, I'd taught myself basic electronics as a kid making kits and got into making car alarms etc for friends, I'd opened it up as I'd been told "tough, it was working when it left and sold as is"

I was pretty devastated $800 gone.

A good 2 days of prodding and probing and was about to give up when I thought I'd check the power supply, a poke and porod and I'd found my gremlin.

A new PSU at $60 and I'm happy as.

Good luck everyone.

Merry Christmas    

My best disaster was soldering the connector backwards on a Raspberry Pi Scroll pHAT. Instead of soldering only the four pins I needed I solder far more before realizing. No solder pump or wick handy made for some fun desoldering and just connecting it with wires in the end :/

A good fix.

Dubbie

A good fix.

Dubbie

By best electronics repair was a Yamaha home theater amplifier I'd purchased off a well known auction site, upon delivery the power delivery board had snapped clean in half, managed to strip and solder all of the traces back together, used some 0.5mm single wire thread (picture hanging wire) and a lot of solder to reinforce the joins and had it functioning again, it wasn't pretty but it worked

I worked for the company that put the Audio Visual System in to the Northern Line Underground trains.
As a Design person we all had to do a two week rotation into the test/fix department.

One of the boards had defeated a REALLY Good Test Engineer, so when I rotated into the department a wicked grin broke across his face and said
"You Design guys think so good, well fix this board then !"
I started on the initial boards to test them and then fixed if there was an issue.
I then turned my attention to the problem board.
Went through the test process, could see there was an issue and then started probing with a scope.
I couldn't see any issues either.
At this point I needed TEA so when to get some.
On the way back I got back to my bench and tripped over a stool.
As I went down my eyes went past the bench level and could see there was a tiny gap between one of the Processor pins and the board itself !
I got up and took the board to one of the ladies who was awesome at soldering (Shirley you are still a legend in my view !).
She very quickly did the repair and I took the board back to retest it.
Lo and Behold the board came up so I put it in the fixed.
The Test Engineer came up to me with a smirk on his face
"So Andre you fixed that board yet ?"
"Yup it's over there"
"Oh yeah we'll test it shall we" think I had told a porky.
"Ok"
He set up the rig and pressed the test button and the board passed.
"F^&% it working !"
"I know"
"I've been working on this board for over a month !"
So we got some more tea together and told him how I did it .