I’m hoping to bring in an old sewing machine and a possible parts donor. It seems like an electrical fault in a board with chonky through-hole components.
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Thanks for swinging by everyone!
Luckily the sewing machine @aneel mentioned was working fine! A repair shop had diagnosed the wrong part as being defective, which ended up being the foot pedal. A compatible spare was available and after a brief unnecessary disassembly of the machine everything worked. Fixing the pedal didn’t occur to me in the moment, but it could be pretty simple if it was something like a broken wire, due to it using a common TS style jack.
@beirdo brought in some extremely cool Western Electric selector relays used in railroad applications approximately 100 years ago. Multiple of these would be used to listen to a signal, like morse code, while only sending the complete signal to the intended recipient. It’s a really cool bit of electromechanical kit that reminds me of a combination between a watch’s movement and a rotary telephone. Video: https://photos.app.goo.gl/hZUY95NcqXFTQHD77
@DanHawn showed off a circuit board from a 80s-90s toy electric guitar that had some neat manufacturing shortcuts and odd design choices. It had a single sided circuit board with much wider traces than the D cell batteries would ever need, but that might have been due to it being a hand designed circuit board. He also shared some really cool ideas he’s working on for using piezoelectric force sensing to drive a light up cane, DIY assistive devices are a passion of mine so I’m really interested in seeing where he goes with it!
@sknodl donated a sweet little seeedstudio grove sensor kit for lab use, plus a really cute Make Magazine light up badge kit that’s perfect as a first time soldering project. If you’re new to soldering this would be an easy introduction that we’d be happy to walk someone through at a future office hours!
@OctopusDream brought by a tiny portable radio that has lost it’s somewhat proprietary usb-c to antenna cable to get some ideas on a fix. I’m guessing that there’s a solder pad on the PCB where a length of wire could be attached to replace the missing antenna, though another option would be figuring out which pin of the usb-c cable was used for the antenna and making a custom cable.
As usual, if you’re interested in repairing some piece of electronics, getting tips on a project you’re working on, or just chatting with some friendly electronics nerds, feel free to come by next month!
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Don’t forget: office hours/open lab/come hang out and chat this Saturday the 9th at noon!
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Very cool. Also, if you have any interest in refrigeration, solar power and/or #vanlife you may want to check it out. I plan on dragging along a new cooling unit that was just delivered. It’s an EG4 Hybrid AC/DC Mini-Split air conditioner and heat pump. The compressor can be connected directly to solar panels without the need for batteries, inverter or an mppt. The unit is DIY friendly with pre-evacuated lines and quick connects. I’m currently working at finding a good gauge set, vacuum pump and a rubber hose line set that would be better suited to installation in a vehicle. Most of the covers inside have already been removed and I haven’t even voided the warrantee nice.
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Glad to see office hours on the calendar again! I’m planning to come visit, with a little ESP32 that is refusing to program for me. I’m hoping I am missing something very basic with it. Or, we can be frustrated at it together! 
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I’ll try to make an appearance. I have another piece of someone else’s e-waste clock that I’d like to fix and I think it needs a replacement 16V 10uf capacitor… Except I can’t remember why I think that 
Hoping someone can help me confirm/deny!
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John, I’d like to stop by and discuss attaching to the large CNC rotary port, but I’ve got an earlier commitment and can’t make it. Gull Durn it! Maybe next time, or a special arrangement. Bri
Thanks to everyone bringing their projects to discuss, lots of cool stuff this weekend.
Thanks especially to John and Kenneth for hanging out with me for an hour getting my recalcitrant ESP8266 to flash! It was really nice to know that I had indeed tried all the basics, AND to have some experienced hands suggest more things to try.
After our work, WLED is flashed on my device and working… here’s a sneak peek!
If you’re wondering, the final secret was jumping IO0 to GND got the chip up in boot loader mode. Just like one of the docs said. Except… the second pin labeled GND on the board was not really ground - it just controls which output IO pin goes to the data line output. So we had to manually jump IO0 to a real ground, in my case the case of the USB plug itself. 
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Nice! Glad to see it working, it’s looking great. Is it a steady glow or a WLED flame effect?
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Flames! 
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