The Smell of Molten Projects in the Morning
Ed Nisley's Blog: Shop notes, electronics, firmware, machinery, 3D printing, laser cuttery, and curiosities. Contents: 100% human thinking, 0% AI slop.
Well, this didn’t take long:
The upper five-LED string in the middle module failed open-circuit, which left the remaining two strings handling too much current. The five LEDs across the middle look like they’re running at War Emergency Power and the lower five are limping along:
The dark spots in the middle are overexposed pixels.
I soldered in a replacement from the same bag and it’s all good again, but I expect that won’t last very long.
It seems to be the season for electronics to go toes up. My 2020 Acer monitor died yesterday afternoon, though trying to check the voltage on the line-lump power supply netted noise. I *think* I made contact with the center conductor, so a replacement supply is on order from Amazon. If not, legacy computer-compatible monitors are affordable.
Meanwhile, the 2003 square monitor is filling in, for values of filling. And Julie wondered why I don’t throw out working electronics…
Hmm. I got a new power supply, turned it on, nice pilot light. Plugged it into the monitor, no turn on, and no pilot light. Disconnect, light goes back on. The new supply has 3X the power of the OEM one, so it’s a pretty solid short. Goes along with the Panasonic Inverter microwave that blew a power semiconductor instead of cooking. Impressive smoke, but mercifully no fire. Still, sigh.
Since the beginning of August, I’ve lost the microwave, a smoke detector (“fault”. Maybe the wildfire smoke overload caused that), and now the monitor. (And the voltmeter says we’re at 118VAC, so the emergency repairs (and new 69kV poles in the fire zone) to the power lines worked.
Back when I was a pup, I puzzled over the difference between an ordinary circuit and a short circuit: I knew the words, but not the concepts. As I was screwing around with line voltage, there is no reason for me to be vertically polarized right now …
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