Repairing Electronics: Electronic Candle

When visiting my parents for Christmas, my dad showed me three electronic candles that did not work anymore. He told me he had changed batteries and showed me that they did not show any signs of life.

I tried to get them to work as well, but no luck.

It sounded like a really fun device to repair, so I took them back to my lab in Oslo to try to see if I could figure out what the problem was.

When repairing electronics, you always have to start with what the problem is. Here, the problem was that nothing happened when connecting the batteries and pressing the ON switch.

When thinking about this problem I came up with two theories:

  • A dead LED inside the candle
  • Bad connections between batteries and the candle circuit

How can I learn to repair electronics?

One of the things that I love about being able to build electronics is that I can also REPAIR electronics =)

Repairing electronics for my drone

I often get the question:

“How can I learn to repair electronics?”

My response is:

How To Repair Electronics: Fixing My Drone

Drone opened with electronics showingBecause of a mistake made by yours truly, I decided to write about how to repair electronics.

You see, I got a drone for Christmas this year.

It was really windy outside that day. However, I was so excited to take it for a spin!

I found a big open space, put my drone down on the ground, and started the take-off.

I only got the drone a couple of meters up into the air before the wind took charge. It blew it further and further away from me until it crashed into a tree and fell to the ground.

This didn’t stop me though. I started over again.

But the same thing happened. It was impossible to control the drone in the strong wind!

After maybe ten crashes, one of the rotors stopped working!

Noooo!

I hoped it was just a flat battery, but it was not.

Your circuit doesn’t work? Here’s what to do…

components-on-breadboard

Do you have a circuit that doesn’t work?

Do you feel you’ve done everything you could? You’ve reconnected the circuit 100 times, and it still doesn’t work?

You’ve put in so much effort, but still no reward…

How does that feel? Are you starting to feel like building electronic circuits might not be for you?

Don’t worry, I’ve been there.

And I have the solution for you.

The solution is being smart. It’s by not giving in to the feeling of giving up or the feeling of trying to work harder.

I started out writing this for myself as a reminder for next time. But then I figured, hey – maybe more people could benefit from this.