More troubleshooting/fundamental video's - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: Teun
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: February 26, 2018, 08:49:49 am
content: Hi everyone/Dave,Is there a chance you could do more fundamental or troubleshooting video's? I personally always find this stuff very usefull. Like -EEVblog #831 - Power A Micro With No Power Pin! - for example. These sort of video's really help the "young players". I myself recently got my EE degree and I think I've learned about just as much from watching EEVblog video's as I did going to lectures.Also for example, if you are starting up new little projects, take us through the designing stages etc. but especially the testing and troubleshooting! That would be very usefull I think.Anyways keep up the good work!

author: EEVblog
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: February 26, 2018, 09:59:55 am
content: Interesting troubleshooting videos are hard to do because they are dependent upon real problems that come up that turn out to be interesting enough to shoot a video about.I could fabricate a troubleshooting scenario of course, but it's wouldn't come across the same.Same thing for repair video, as with my luck they are usually either very simple or beyond economical repair.

author: Rutherfordium
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: February 27, 2018, 09:48:19 pm
content: Quote from: EEVblog on February 26, 2018, 09:59:55 amYou could possibly try repairs or troubleshooting without filming, and if you find something that would work for a video you can just go over it and explain your thought process. Like "First I checked this and it was fine" instead of pretending you haven't already done it, which I agree would be awkward.This is assuming that the filming and production makes it go much slower and it wouldn't be that big of a time sink to explore some possible repairs to try and find a good one.

author: Teun
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: March 05, 2018, 08:33:20 am
content: Exactly I usually benefit from a good line of thoughts. Just things like measuring alone sometimes helps me on my way.

author: rrinker
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 05, 2018, 04:30:34 pm
content: I'm not so sure methodical troubleshooting is something you can really teach. At least, I can't seem to. It's something I tend to be fairly good at, and when I try to help others they often seem to have not the slightest clue where to start. I can lay out a plan for them to follow, and they can follow it and get results, but then when the next problem comes along, once again they are lost.Not necessarily electronics - despite an EE degree I have very little working experience as an EE, and none of that was really design work. But most any other system, be it computer networks, a model railway, small engines - I can usually figure out the problem fairly quickly.Case in point of not knowing a reasonable way to go about it - I was having signal problems with my cable modem (and starting to get bad enough to cause issues with watching TV as well). After verifying a poor signal inside (though slightly annoyed they wouldn't take my word for it, I've had enough experience to know you can't), I think my next step would have been to check the signal at the house, just off the pole, rather than to go about the house and cut off all my nicely crimped connectors and put new ones on (sorry kid, I've been terminating coax longer than you've been alive). The work my way downstream to the point the signal degraded and then the problem would HAVE to be between there and the last point tested. Also not a very technical 'tech' - wasn't interested in seeing the signal levels my cable modem showed, just wanted me to do speed tests to prove it was a mere fraction of what I was supposed to get. So after all that proved fruitless, and I had all new ends on every cable in the house, NOW he goes outside, checks the line from the pole - OK, it's good there. So now he wants to run a new cable in the hardest possible place to fish a cable in my house, above the fire resistant ceiling of the garage - because just on the other side of the garage, it tested bad. There's only one problem - he tested the line from the pole BEFORE the lightning arrestor, and the line inside was of course AFTER it. I suggested he hook his fancy Fluke to the cable AFTER the arrestor and try that before digging out cable. Sure enough - bad. 5 minutes later, everything is back to normal. I don't get charged for this, so saving the guy an hour's worth of hard work didn't mean they made less money from me, in fact, I believe they are paid by how many calls they make in a day, so I helped the guy. But it seemed so obvious to me - I don't have mice or other critters in my house, so how could the cable up there, undisturbed, go bad, plus there were electrical storms shortly before the service went in the dumper. Had I even know that thing was there I probably would have just run off to the hardware store and replaced it myself - it took over a week of calling to finally get someone scheduled to come take a look in the first place.

author: Teun
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: March 13, 2018, 01:13:23 pm
content: Well... I think methodically troubleshooting can be taught. Assuming you have a "common farmers sense" as we say it. With a little bit of logical thinking you can come a long way.But this wasn't especially what I meant. I was aiming at the less obvious things you can encounter. Sometimes when I'm designing a PCB for instance, you can have layout problems causing an entire PCB to malfunction. Even going back to the basics and trying to figure out what is wrong can be a big challenge for a beginning engineer. Because the cause can be things you never even heard of at that point. And at points like this I really would appreciate an experienced opinion. Like I said, lines of thought can really help.Basic voltage, resistance measuring etc. is something you can expect an EE to know. (If not you should probably not have gotten a degree)

author: 13hm13
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: April 05, 2018, 10:23:57 pm
content: ANY reasonably-done (= attempted) electronic troubleshooting will get an automatic thumbs up from me.I can't watch most movies or TV shows anymore w/o getting bored ... but I was totally engrossed in Dave's recent HP dumpster project. Nicely done, Dave!SignalPath has a lotta goodies in this genre, too.