Steelseries Arctis Nova 5 5P 5X - headband replacement

 I bought the wife this Steelseries Arctis Nova 5X headset about two years ago. She'd had enough of the Corsair HS80 that I'd bought her a few months prior to that. She said the Corsairs were too heavy. The Corsairs are heavy, although having since had to replace the headband on both the HS80 and the Nova 5X, it is plainly the case that the reason for that is that the Corsair is the better quality headset in terms of build. The HS80 also sounds better than the Nova 5X and has a better microphone. Those are facts. On the other hand, the Nova 5X is a very good headset and is lighter and far more comfortable in long gaming sessions than the HS80. The Nova 5X also works wirelessly with pretty much any device whereas the HS80 only works on a PC. Thus, the Nova 5X is a decent, practical, headset, and so worth repairing when, last week, the wife dropped her headset on the floor and the plastic headband snapped just above the right ear cup. I had to source the replacement part from Aliexpress - about £15 delivered to the UK: 

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005010564857806.html

Swapping out the old band with the new was very straightforward - just remove the four T5H screws from each side of the band and everything comes apart. The internal rubber strip on the old band has to be removed - it is stuck in with double-sided tape which I was able to re-use. Reassembly is the reverse of the procedure. Couldn't be simpler (in complete contrast to the procedure which applies when replacing the same band on the HS80s)! 

More soon, no doubt....

D

Ford Fiesta Mk7.5 - High level / third brake light failure - FIXED!

Hello. And long time no see! It's been two years since my last post on here. Now, its not that I haven't been fixing stuff but I had kind of forgotten all about this blog. Plus, I have started fixing things "live" on my Twitch channel which, whilst somewhat troublesome setting up numerous cameras and angles, and my digital microscope, and ensuring I have to hand all the various things required to effect a repair of something, I find less daunting than providing a written-up post on this blog. I think I'm lazy.

Anyway, to the matter in hand. I had a spare hour yesterday afternoon and my mind wandered to the high level or "third" brake light on my 2016 model Fiesta. The light is housed within the spoiler and on my car it had stopped working about five years ago. It's been on my list of things to do since then but since I had read that the light was (a) a sealed unit and (b) could not be fixed and could only be replaced as a full unit for about £70, I was not hopeful and just kind of left it. However, yesterday I did take a look at it. 

Removal from the car is straightforward - just two "star" screws and off it pops. Disconnect the power supply and pull the rubber hose free for the rear window washer. Now, I didn't take any pictures of the next bit but I wish I had - it would be easier than trying to explain in writing what I did. The light unit is indeed "sealed", but not in any serious sense or to make waterproof. 

I was able to flex the whole thing a bit between my palms and create enough of a gap between the two halves to get a Stanley knife blade in there. And having done that, I very carefully pulled the blade all along the seam and then the unit was apart. Inside there is a clear lens which simply unclips. The lens also holds "the bulb" which is, in fact a, LED strip containing three bulbs. Here we are: 

Some pictures of "the bulb":

My bulb was obviously knackered. I did a google to see if the bulb existed as a part in its own right but it does not. But that's ok, as I could see that the bulb runs on 13.5 volts and only requires two wires to work - the feed and the ground. With that in mind, I retrieved an off-cut of LED "neon" rope that was left over from another project - it too only requires a 12v feed and ground to work. Plus, it is encased in silicon and, supposedly, completely waterproof:

So, I soldered a wire tail to each pad on the the neon rope and fed those tails out through the back of the light unit. I then chopped down the clear lens so that it would just sit on top of the neon rope in the correct position in the light. I secured everything with some blobs of silicone bathroom sealant. I then stripped back the wires and added some solder to firm them up.

I refitted the light to the car. I simply poked the soldered ends of my wires into the connector on the car and then tie-wrapped everything together to stop anything becoming dislodged. 

Hey presto: 

 I don't know how long this will work for and, really, I don't care. It cost me nothing to fix (apart from about an hour of my time). If you fancy doing this repair yourself, this is the sort of thing you need: 

The shortest length of bright white led neon rope on Amazon is less than £10 and for that you'll have enough length to fix about 20 fiesta brake lights. You could go into business. You're welcome!

More soon, no doubt....

Dave

Kenwood dishwasher fun (KDW12ST3A): E3 (low heat error) and the upper spray bar

 Well, its been a while since my dishwasher last needed some TLC. As to that, see my many previous posts on this matter. 

Lately, the dishwasher has been misbehaving again. Items in the top drawer were often not cleaned properly and there would sometimes be, additionally, an E3 (low heat) error. Based on prior experience I didn't think the low heat error would be connected to a problem with the heater or pump. And so having mulled over this occasional annoyance (for several months, in fact), the actual cause of the problem finally revealed itself - the upper spray bar was simply worn out and on a recent wash completely detached itself from its connection. I think the low heat error was due to the bar leaking out of all the wrong places with the result that the water pressure in the machine was not high enough to keep the heater switched on (again, see my previous posts for my theory about that).  

It was clear on a close inspection that the bar was beyond saving and needed replacing. I did give considerable thought to finally buying a new dishwasher as I've had my money's worth out of this one, but the thought of tossing this long-time but slightly-not-working-properly family member into the scrap was too much to bear. 

A quick browse on Amazon turned up what appeared to be an identical spare part for £26. To be fair, that was more than I wanted to pay so I took a punt on a cheaper part which looks a bit different but which I hoped would fit. That part arrived the other day. It took me 30 seconds to install it and now I have my dishwasher back, functioning perfectly and lovely clean dishes. This is the part I bought from Amazon. Pictures below compare the old and new parts for reference.

More soon, no doubt....

D

Er,... hello again!

This is my first post in a good while. It's not that I've not been fixing things but instead I kind of forgot all about this having this blog. Oops! Trying to think back about the things I forgot to share and which would have made ideal EOaMI fodder, the list includes replacing the full joy-stick setup in several Xbox controllers. I've also replaced the USB ports on a couple of Blue Yeti microphones. I built myself a gaming PC. And I made a large LED light which sits on the floor and washes the wall behind with whatever colour I desire. 

And why did I make that LED light, you might ask. Well, I'm putting my new PC to good use by dabbling a bit with live streaming and having some ambient light behind me when I am on camera makes for a nicely chilled image. So far I've streamed some classic Xbox games and a bit of Fortnite. But in the past few weeks I've resurrected an old Minecraft World that must be about six years old by now. It is, in fact, the only Minecraft World I ever made and basically contains all the things I built with my boy whenever we played together. In a way it charts his early childhood and is made more interesting by the addition of a rollercoaster that travels around all the fabulous things which we made. At time of writing, the coaster journey lasts for about 7 minutes end-to-end and gets a bit longer with every stream as we add new sights to the world (yes, we still play together :)). But what makes it really interesting is the addition of a ray tracing resource and texture pack. I cannot explain how good the world now looks, with accurate light and shadows, and warmth. I love going on there and there'll be plenty more streams in the future. 

So, this post is really just to say that I'm still here, fixing things, and I'm making a promise to add more content in the future. Heck, I could even live stream a repair on my Twitch channel! And I suppose this is a shameless plug but this is my blog so I can do as I please: if you want to see my Minecraft World all blinged-up with ray tracing, or anything else I might be streaming, come visit my Twitch channel: SuperHeroGamers

Until next time...

D.

Logitech G213 Keyboard - Faulty - missed / duplicate key presses: Fixed

I got this G213 keyboard from Curry's in June. It was part of a pack that game with the G203 mouse and G332 headset and was intended for use with a new gaming PC I was building. It took another month before I'd finished buying all the bits for the PC so the keyboard stayed in its box. When I came to use it for the first time, it was clear that the keyboard had a problem. The left-hand CTRL and SHIFT keys only worked intermittently. The E and S had the same problem (but hardly ever worked), and the R key often registered two presses at a time. The keyboard was basically unusable. And playing Fortnite on it was impossible. 

So, I decided it should go back to Curry's. 

I had two problems with that, however. The only receipt I had was the Paypal transaction which didn't specify the item bought or contain an order number. And the Curry's Helpline was no good as they couldn't stay on the line long enough to take my details. Very annoying when the telephone queue to speak to someone is an hour long. I therefore decided to cut my losses and scrap the keyboard. Individual keys go for a few quid on ebay so I figured I could get some money back by selling it in bits. I did have to wait for my new keyboard to arrive though. And now that it has, I set about dismantling the G213. I took some photos of the process.

First, I removed the rubber pads from the corners and under the wrist rest. I warmed them a bit with a hairdryer before sticking my spadger underneath. For reasons that will become apparent, I'm glad I took care with this. Then I removed the seven silver screws and the two black screws.

At this stage the top part of the keyboard can be unclipped from the bottom part. I used my spadger again, very carefully working my round the casing. Note that the top part can be lifted away without needing to remove any of the keys. This is a picture of the underside of the top part with keys in situ.

Close up of the underside of the keys

And this is the silicone membrane that lives under the top part of the keyboard. It is held in place by some pegs on the bottom part of the key board. But here's the interesting thing - on my keyboard it wasn't particularly "in place".

Circuit board...

 

The silicon membrane can be peeled back to reveal the actual gubbins of the keyboard. There are three layers of plastic film. The top and bottom layers contain the "circuit" for each key. The middle layer is clear but contains a small reveal for each key. You can see this if you zoom into any of the pictures below.

I think it works like this. When a key is pressed, the raised dome on the membrane under the key is squished onto the top layer of film. This, in turn, presses the printed circuit through the cutout in plain middle layer and makes contact with the circuit on the layer underneath. This is the point at which the key-press is registered. It occurred to me that if any of the sheets were misaligned, or if the silicon membrane wasn't sitting quite right, there could be issues with typing. I tested my theory by typing straight on to the top layer of film (just using my finger tips). The keyboard was fully operational! 

I decided against scrapping it and instead reassembled it very carefully. Before doing so, I took a few more pictures of the internals. These are pictures which all the films peeled back:

Bits of plastic swarf in the membrane...

I got rid of the swarf and dusted the plastic films with a lint free cloth. I then rolled them back into place taking care to ensure that they were properly located on the pins and completely flat. I then rolled the membrane over and again ensured that it was located on the pins and completely flat. I then refitted the top half of the keyboard - there are some locating tabs for that purpose so I made sure that the top was completely clipped into the bottom before re-fixing the screws. I fixed the black screws in first but without turning the keyboard completely upside down. Once they were in, I turned the keyboard over completely and added the silver screws and the rubber feet. 

And wow - the keyboard now works completely fine! In fact, the key-press movement feels completely different. Previously it was really squishy but now seems far more precise. I think the problem was probably that the silicon membrane was not fitted properly when the keyboard was originally built. Either that, or it has somehow been dislodged in transit. Anyway, if you've got one of these keyboards and it starts playing up (and you've not just spilled your beer on it), I reckon just taking it apart a bit and rebuilding it should sort it.

As a final note, this was not a complete disassembly - they was no need for that, in my opinion. But if you need to take all the internals apart as well, this video on youtube may help.

More soon, no doubt....

D