A random idea I just had for Dave - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: wosser
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: January 06, 2014, 08:33:57 pm
content: I was just thinking about how Dave recently mentioned his "EEVBlog repair curse" - where he seems to keep finding tantalising repair projects that end up being financially impractical to complete. Because some exotic and expensive part has gone kaboom or the problem is just completely unfathomable.Got me thinking about something that might be fun to do as a short series between Dave and one of his online electronics pals such as Fran or Mike's Electric Stuff (or anyone else).Here's how it would work...Mike (for example) could take a piece of interesting (but inexpensive) electronics gear and subtly tweak it in such a way that it no longer works properly. Then he mails it to Dave who then tries to track down the problem and then fixes it, thus earning geek cred and providing some fun content. Then Dave finds something else to likewise meddle with and send it along to Fran (again, for example) and then she fixes the gadget and uploads her findings too, then she finds something for Mike to fix...That's about as far as I got with the idea -- it sounded like a fun short series of videos that might amuse people.Dunno, maybe this would have to be a one-off short series because it might otherwise get expensive after a whileAnyway, I'm a big fan of Dave's, Mike's, and Fran's channels, the content is always awesome. Long may they continue.

author: Jon86
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: January 06, 2014, 08:42:55 pm
content: Haha, that actually sounds like quite a fun idea. I think they've all got enough on their plate to make it a regular thing, but as a one off it might work. Mind you, Dave's already got more than one thing he's working on repairing, so I don't think he'd be too happy to have more

author: vk6zgo
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 08, 2014, 01:16:32 pm
content: The old "drawing pin through a capacitor trick"?

author: GeoffS
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: January 08, 2014, 01:24:55 pm
content: Reminds me of the practical exams as part of training as a radio technician in the RAAF (many, many years ago)A piece of equipment was made unserviceable and you had to track down the fault. Points were given as much on correct troubleshooting procedures as much as actually finding the fault.It often depended on who the instructor was on how difficult the fault was, you hoped for one of the lazy ones who wanted to knock off early

author: Excavatoree
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: January 08, 2014, 01:34:54 pm
content: Quote from: GeoffS on January 08, 2014, 01:24:55 pmOur former service trainer had that philosophy. He told his class (which I attended for the mechanical and hydraulic lessons) not to "find what the instructor did to the machine," but to troubleshoot the problem correctly. Too many service trainers don't do that.

author: SeanB
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 08, 2014, 02:49:12 pm
content: When I was training bas an apprentice they had this new electronic fault finding simulator. I figured out how to wire it up so that you could see any of the 16 faults it could induce on a DMM in a single screen. After some practise I was able to do the 6 faults in the simulation in under the test time duration of 6 seconds. The instructors were not exactly pleased about that, having a time of 0.0 minutes, the slowest guy was at 35 minutes......... He was rather held up by the language issues.