[justifier]

i've fantasised about something like this before

my neighbors are consistently throwing away perfectly fine electronics where 90% of the problems are a blown electrolytic capacitor

there is a place in our apartment complex where we place electronic rubbish and just two days ago i noticed a tablet with a destroyed screen

i popped it open and everything inside looked pristine so i bought a new screen for some ~20$ and am now waiting on it to arrive

i've fixed a toaster oven with a busted resistor, 50in plasma tv with a blown capacitor i now use as a monitor for my laptop when working at home, a blender with a broken container and blown capacitor.. an older blender model that actually has a standard thread size so i am able to use mason jars as a, what i think is superior, container

i think repair should be taught in schools, a la 'home ec', educationally its a three`for : repair, basic ee, basic applied maths

when i was living in squats in london part of the squat culture was to slowly accrue enough bike parts in the hope that you could one day open your squat doors as a bike repair cafe

i have thought quite often something similar for basic everyday electronics would be great for educational and environmental concerns

there is so much unneccessary eWaste, even if something is beyond simple component swap repair it can itself be used to source parts for other fixable devices

the idea that we toss away a salvageable device, or even its sometimes hundreds of functioning discreet components, because of a single blown capacitor, frayed wire or dislodged headphone jack is upsetting

[fraudsyndrome]

This is something I'd love to do except it sounds like you said, it requires some basic knowledge of EE etc. Maybe the basics isn't too hard but with the vast diversity of different types of electronics - it troubles me just thinking about troubleshooting what of the 100s of internal parts could be the issue.

I've done my own repairs for phone screens/boot loop issues etc. but they were considered super easy because they were popular phones (galaxy/iphone) and as such, guides were plentiful on youtube. I can't imagine similar resources would be available for, say, a random branded tv or a blender.

Screen fixes are super easy for phones as it's usually a take apart and replace the cables and put back in deal. Anything remotely difficult was fixing a bootloop issue on a galaxy s4 which required a multimeter to confirm the issue and a soldering iron but again, a guide on the exact issue told me exactly what to do.

[justifier]

i hear you

electricity should be treated with respect

but i made a point to emphasise that the majority of problems are blown capacitors

this is a prevalent problem(o) that is easy to diagnose and easy to fix

for the listed examples my only diagnostic tool was my eyes, when a capacitor blows you can tell.. that is it looks like it failed in some way

to replace it you have to desolder two connections and solder in a replacement

the capacitors usually give you all of the information you need right on them: capacitance, rated voltage, positive and negative lead; so without needing to know what those things are or why they are important finding a replacement is straight forward and replacing is plug and play, with a bit of solder, if you keep track of how the original was oriented

but like all things it takes time to get comfortable and you get better with more exposure, which is why i emphasised a desire for basic ee to be a part of early education

first time i worked on a car myself i was driving on the highway and my car just stopped, roadside said it'd take 2 hours to get to me, i was unfamiliar with car mechanics but i thought 'i'll just look at it and see if i can see what's wrong, maybe i can fix it', i popped the hood and looked at the engine, it a took a minute to suss it out but when i found the problem it was glaring, the air intake for the engine had popped off, the screw band had rusted and failed, i just pushed the tubing back on the intake pipe, used a dime to screw the rusted band on enough to get me to a hardware store to replace the screw band

i knew i'd be unable to disassemble the transmission on the side of the highway, the first time i opened a car hood, in less than 2 hours, but those expectations were too exaggerated, all i had to do was push a tube on a pipe

i think repair cafes are less about having an in house solution to all problems and more about having broad solutions to the problems that occur the most, and like a bike cafe it could be a hands on experience where there are people there who can help, showing you how to troubleshoot and repair

(o) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacitor_plague

[chrisseaton]

> there is a place in our apartment complex where we place electronic rubbish and just two days ago i noticed a tablet with a destroyed screen ... i popped it open and everything inside looked pristine so i bought a new screen for some ~20$ and am now waiting on it to arrive

Note that taking someone's rubbish without permission is considered theft in the UK (there is precedent). If you sell it it's even worse because it's handling stolen goods.

[jjeaff]

In the US, it is legal to take garbage. And there is precedent for that as well. Although there can be trespassing issues if you don't have permission to be there. (like digging through a private dumpster at a business).

[justifier]

ha! depressing

though i doubt the people i was living with who would break into abandoned buildings to establish residence are all that too concerned with your rubbish 'theft' precedent

the tablet salvage was in the states and unfortunately i'd be unsurprised if there are equally uncharitable precedent here as well

.. as an aside, i would be interested in reading your referenced precedent, i agree going through someone's bin to get personal info or to file false credit card offers on their behalf should be illegal, but i'd be interested to read the ruling if it is literally a broken electronics salvage

[mannanj]

So it's theft unless the trash companies do it? Essentially sounds like unless you're a company, i.e. you're doing this personally, you are stealing (unless of course people pay you as a company to steal their stuff).

[nyolfen]

oi mate where's ya rubbish licence

[briandear]

Squatting in a residential building is also illegal: https://www.gov.uk/squatting-law

[aasasd]

Meanwhile, in Russia the repair culture never went away, for obvious reasons. It's inconceivable here that people would just throw away all broken things without attempting to fix them. Repair shops are everywhere―there are even more for phones and laptops now than for other stuff.

[QML]

Is most of consumer hardware built on top of open source or on proprietary tools? I would love to see a movement where companies build products and then give away implementation details, but the cynic in me says repair costs is the analog of advertising revenue for these companies.

[dbalatero]

A lot of analog synths from the 70s and 80s have full service manuals with complete circuit schematics, so repair is actually very doable. People even clone old hardware from tracing these circuits and laying them out on new modern pcbs.

[agumonkey]

What I don't get is that the trend is increasing. Every Month i Can find vast amount of things.