A moment with Chris Thompson

Our Sony multi-function remote was getting old, so we decided to try the Logitech Harmony 880 remote after reading good reviews (note the 880 design is a few years old however). I ordered the remote on eBay in a bulk shipment from China, new refurbished for around $95. It definitely had some quirks we had to work out, the biggest being it wouldn’t charge on its base.



The Fix:
Since we ordered this from China, I figured I should try to fix this myself before sending it back. The remote wouldn’t charge on the base, the connection was flaky and the remote would stop charging after one minute it seemed. Adding weight to the remote to help make the connection didn’t help either. First I tried opening the base up to see if I could raise the connectors. I didn’t get far, there’s no easy way to open the base. Read the rest of this entry »

We managed to avoid a $300+ repair recently by fixing the capacitors in our Philips 42″ plasma TV ourselves.  The unit is only about 3-4 years old and we were really disappointed it started having problems so quickly.  Sometimes it wouldn’t turn on, and would simply flash the red LED seven (7) times slowly.  I decided to do some research on the internet for possible home solutions for this plasma TV repair.

There’s actually a lot of information online about this problem, and how to do the fix.  Both my bad capacitors were 3300 mF / 10V / 105 degree centigrade rated.  They both were slightly bulged at the tops, with a small amount of black material coming through the top.  Every other capacitor on the board had a shiny, flat top.

Read the rest of this entry »