Useful Electron

eevBLAB 88 - Right To Repair Questions & Answers - YouTube Dave discuss and summarise questions and answers related to the "Right to Repair Movement". "They do things without any technological or marketing reason behind it other than to make it more difficult to repair". "They use custom parts instead of components that do the same and are available off the shelf." "Right to repair is a given in other industries like in white goods and cars. In other products It was a given but not anymore, TV´s used to have a circuit diagram when you removed the back cover." "Somehow we come into a point in society that you don´t own a product that you actually buy and you should not use unauthorise repair centers." Dave says authorise centers do board swaps, they don´t do component level repairs. "You should get the products you own repaired at a reasonable cost." "The don´t want people sharing repair information, that is ridiculous...

The global microchip shortage has hit the production of everything from mobile phones, to fridges, and cars.   https://www.bbc.com/news/av/business-56943292

The issue that I am going to describe could be a common fault in many steams irons and getting them into a solution just can be a little bit time-consuming... (I agree, we run out of time for this things nowadays!) but It might even be seen as an interesting and non expensive task .  One day probably happened to one of us that our trustworthy steam iron stops heating up. We might think that after more than 2 years of regular use the heating element could be broken and we should consider it unfixable. If by coincidence you bumped into the same fault as me, without any doubt I think the fixing chore ritual is gonna be at least much more entertaining with this guide, I can assure you that right now!   The above photo shows what we find in our unit after removing a torx screw from the back and proceed to take the cover off the appliance. Here we can get access to another three screws more, one which hold the exposed cables with their connectors and other two screws below which kee...

  'Degree inflation': How the four-year degree became required - BBC Worklife

  We all have been using portable torches run by batteries sometimes when we can not see properly in tight spaces of small things, and perhaps in different situations we come across having not enough light with one desk lamp and ended up turning on lights from the ceiling as well. Why not get a middle size desk lamp (8" tall) that works well as a torch with high brightness and serves at the same time as illumination for the dark and excluded side of your desk? Most of materials are recycled or found at a low cost. You can use same ones but I encourage everyone to make the most of the bits you may have lying around home or perhaps somebody got ones that are about to toss, why not used them for standing a useful handy light? As you can see below removing just two screws can be flat-pack!  These are the main components that worked out for me :                   12 V Power Adapter (taken from and old internet router...

European Commission now has the full support of the Parliament in moving forward with the development of laws aimed at extending the lifetime of products such as smartphones and laptops. The Parliament also supports a mandatory labelling system to inform consumers on the level of repairability of products sold in shops and online. https://repair.eu/news/european-parliament-stands-by-consumers-and-the-environment-in-the-fight-against-obsolescence/

Fair Saturday is a global mobilisation that aims to create a positive social impact every  last Saturday of November , the day following Black Friday, the greatest expression of consumerism. https://festival.fairsaturday.org/en

Guide for smartphones showing repairability scores between zero and ten.  Ten is the easiest phone to repair. https://www.ifixit.com/smartphone-repairability

Now more than ever we are relying on our electronic devices to stay connected and live our lives as close to normal as possible. The pandemic and various countries’ lockdowns have limited our access to these devices with supply chains disrupted and many no longer able to afford to buy new. Therefore, we should be able to repair and reuse what we already have; whether at home ourselves, with the help of community volunteers where possible or through independent repair shops.  Open Repair Announcement

Louis Rossmann from  Rossmann Repair Group  joins Dave to discuss Right To Repair legislation and repairability of products. https://theamphour.com/the-amp-hour-507-right-to-repair-with-louis-rossmann/

This program couldn't be made without open source code found on the internet.                                 I assume anyone could find the libraries used or similar ones just by looking for keywords. //################################################################################################################################################################# //LIBRARIES: #include <MPU6050.h> // Library needed to read the accelerometer and giroscope module MPU6050. #include <I2Cdev.h> // Library needed to get I2C comms between MPU6050 and Arduino Pro Mini. #include <Wire.h> // Library I2Cdev.h needs library Wire.h by default. #include <LowPower.h> // This library might be useful in the future in case we need to save power (instead of changing the battery) #include "SingleEMAFilterLib.h" // Library used for getting extra low pass filtering, I couldn´t managed tweaking just wit...

Many of us have suffered of back pain at some stage of our life, just have a bad looking posture standing up or may have a feeling that if you don´t correct your posture you are gonna grow some sort of hump. If you google it looks there are plenty of solutions up there but most of them either don´t work for you, look inconvenient or they are just too pricey for what it actually does. THE BASIS: This wearable basically is meant to be placed on your back (positioned either with double sided tape for skin or with elastic cords) and It will vibrate once you tilt too much. By a mobile phone terminal using bluetooth you can set from what angle It is gonna make the device the vibration and It is easy to stop/resume the vibrator at any time. Some of you may come across already with a product very similar to this one which has more features, looks alright but with a 3 figure price tag. Instead someone with some basic electronics know how can do this one for a price of $20. It is dimensions are ...

Coming up.... Bluetooth Posture Corrector for 20$ (all details) usefulelectron@gmail.com