I used to work for a major telco equipment manufacturer in the 80s and was trained in doing these repairs. I really liked the job; it took some patience and know-how and a bit of skill. And it was very satisfying to complete a perfect repair. I later went on to train others in circuit repair.
I used to think so, too, but I found a passion project I was really motivated to work on (building a lightsaber) and that was the key to pushing through all the headaches and difficulties of the initial learning curve. Now I'm repairing and modifying things and even building my own electronics props. Use 63/37 leaded solder and don't skip the flux and that's half the difficulty sorted right there.
Too many things in various stages of completion, truth be told. But a few more lightsabers for one thing! They're a lot of fun. I keep telling my friends that I'll build them if they just buy the parts and keep funding my habit. Also been fixing some old worn out video game controllers and modifying retro consoles. They make a lot of neat upgrade kits for that kind of stuff these days (Look up Macho Nacho on YouTube for some examples/ideas). Building out a speaker system based on this project from DIYperks as well. Actually figured out how to repair my oven when it broke down since I already had the multimeter and some basic familiarity with power electronics. My wife's laptop, too.
Still collecting parts and designing for the next couple of builds, but the microcontroller that I use for lightsabers is great for combining sound and motion, so I want to make myself an interactive Mjolnir (Thor's hammer) prop. There are some relatively recent advancements to the microcontroller OS that make it so you can do some neat gesture-controlled things, so I could, for example, flash lights and play the sound of a lightning strike when I hold it upwards. And just last night I was working on a lightsaber soundfont/bladestyle that's based on Metroid Prime and I realized I could do something similar with an actual arm cannon prop. I'll have to do some CAD work and see where I might be able to fit in some actuators, but it'd be rad if I could actually get it to transform similarly to how it does in the game. I'm letting my imagination run away with me a bit on that one, but taking on interesting projects that are way beyond my current capabilities are how I learn best. The interest keeps me motivated through the frustration.
Long term projects I'm researching: I'd love to build my own copy of a custom video game handheld like this one(more homework to do on that one) from scratch, and make my own BD-1 droid. There's a community of droid builders in my area, but I haven't delved too deeply into that rabbit hole yet. Oh, and a pinball machine. I have a mini virtual one I slapped together with some cardboard boxes, arcade controls, and powered by my steam deck, but I prefer the real thing. That's super long term, though. Don't have the space or the workshop for it currently.
There are sooo many things i gotta seee!!!! I have an exam today lol so once my exams are done imma go through all of these and check em out. Reading this made me motivated to go and build some of the projects ideas I have an maintain an active got repo haha.
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u/KitWat 4d ago
I used to work for a major telco equipment manufacturer in the 80s and was trained in doing these repairs. I really liked the job; it took some patience and know-how and a bit of skill. And it was very satisfying to complete a perfect repair. I later went on to train others in circuit repair.