Category Archives: Honey I Fixed It

Mackie SRM150 repair

Honey I Fixed It, Sound,

I received two Mackie SRM150 amplifiers that had the same problem: both powered on but did not reproduce any sound apart from some louder than normal hiss and a very noticeable pop when turning up the volume. The problem on both units turned out to be a defective linear regulator component on the preamp/mixer board. Read further if you want to learn more about the repair… Continue reading Mackie SRM150 repair →

Philips PerfectCare Aqua does not pump [SOLVED]

Honey I Fixed It

The PerfectCare Aqua is a steam generator iron made by Philips. My model GC8620 had a strange problem: it would heat up the iron and I could hear the steam chamber heating up also, but when I pressed the trigger on the iron (after the steam chamber made no more noise and it was at the right temperature), the pump would not work. No water being pumped to the steam chamber meant no steam 🙁

Let’s dig deeper and try to find the culprit and repair this… Continue reading Philips PerfectCare Aqua does not pump [SOLVED] →

A20-OLinuXino-MICRO 5V SATA MOSFET repair

Honey I Fixed It

I have an Olimex A20-OLinuXino-MICRO board that I use for running embedded Linux (armbian). It is a very nice board with an Allwinner A20 dual core ARM processor, 1GB RAM and a lot of connections. The features I like the most are the SATA connection and the integrated LiPo battery charger. It is like a uninterruptible power supply on board!

Unfortunately both the 5V connection for the SATA drive and the LiPo battery connection are close to each other and they have exactly the same female JST connector. You  can probably guess what went wrong: I connected the LiPo battery to the 5V SATA connector and I plugged the 5V cable from the SATA drive into the LiPo connection on the PCB 😮

Luckily all Olimex hardware is open source and that is yet another reason I love this Bulgarian company! On the A20-OLinuXino-MICRO wiki page you can find a lot of information, including a link to their github repository that also includes the full schematic!

So let’s digg into the documentation and get this thing repaired… Continue reading A20-OLinuXino-MICRO 5V SATA MOSFET repair →

D-Link DGS-1500-20 DHCP problem fixed

Honey I Fixed It, Network

I had a very strange problem in my home network: some wired hosts did not get an IP address from my wireless router. After some sniffing with Wireshark, I concluded that this problem only occurred with hosts that were connected to my D-Link DGS-1500-20 gigabit Ethernet switch. Hosts that were connected to my wireless router received an IP address via DHCP without any problem.

I did not find any settings in the DGS-1500 that could fix this problem and even a factory reset (pushing the reset button) did not fix it. Eventually I was able to fix this problem by updating the stock firmware 1.00.013 to version 2.51.005!

Fix fraying shoelaces with heat shrink tubing

Honey I Fixed It

Normally the ends of shoelaces are protected with plastic caps to prevent them from fraying, but they sometimes break and get loose. Once the ends of shoelaces start fraying, it is very hard to put them through the tiny holes of your shoes.  This is an easy fix:

  1. Get some glue, the right size of heat shrink tubing and a heat gun (or a lighter)
  2. Put a little amount of glue on your finger and wet the ends of the fraying shoelaces with it.
  3. Cut a suitable length of heat shrink tubing and shove it over the end of the fraying shoelace.
  4. Apply heat with a heat gun and you are done!

Capacitor replacement

Honey I Fixed It

I had opened my Asus WL-500g deluxe router because I was planning to hook something to the internal serial port header. I immediately spotted a dodgy looking capacitor.bad capacitor

This 6V 1000µF capacitor had a bulging top and after desoldering only measured 5µF! I replaced it with a 16V 1000µF capacitor:

new capacitor

The area around the capacitor is getting pretty hot, that is why I plan on adding a fan later.