The New Hotness

A friend, anticipating a stream of visitors for their freshly hatched baby, asked for help with a defunct remote doorbell. A bit of probing showed that shorting across the pushbutton switch contacts reliably triggered the bell, so I unsoldered it:

A similar switch from the heap had a longer stem that was easy enough to shorten, so the repair didn’t take very long at all: ya gotta have stuff!

An autopsy reveals the expected contact corrosion:

Underexposing the image by about two stops retained some texture on the contact dome.

The IC date codes suggest the box is over a decade old, which is as much life as one can expect from cheap consumer electronics, particularly with an unsealed switch placed outdoors.

It’s probably good for another decade…