I want to try and get into repairing electronics, but I don't know where to find things to try and fix. Before I start buying things off Ebay, does PrepHole know where I might be able to find broken electronics?
I want to try and get into repairing electronics, but I don't know where to find things to try and fix.
You might want to ask a local appliance recycling place.
I don't know whether those places actually ever sell individual items to the public, but they'd have the largest collection of broken electronics.
Dumpster diving?
DUMPSTER DIVING!
Any tips? I've never done it before.
Find some place going out of business or doing a renovation and go at it!
But literally everything has circuit boards in it. Find an old laptop charger or some shit and rip it open.
I’m moronic and tried to lern some electrons, so I got a couple cheap Harbor Freight lights, a cheap power tools battery, and a 5pk of USB charging boards from Amazon for like $1/ea and converted a couple lights from 3x AAA to lithium rechargeable.
You could also get the cheap like $5 power banks from Walmart, the ones that are like a lipstick size/dimension, those are typically once 18650 or larger cell plus a small charge control board and you can pull the 5V from the USB out and connect that to anything that would run off 3x AA or AAA cells.
Here’s what I’m talking about with the cheap $5 cell phone power banks.
ask family/friends, everyone has a drawer filled with broken tech they've been too lazy to throw away
Louis Rossman. His older videos of board-level repair are high-end, and usually on repairs you'll do, it might be something simpler: look around for anything burnt. Does it get any power at all?
The last router I fixed, had a physical power switch that was loose. One before that had a bad fuse that looks like an SMD resistor. Before that, bad firmware: look up the model common issue, update or swap with DD-WRT.
With a simple inspection you can luck-out on scrapped items. With skills in SMD repair, flow station etc, you can accomplish more complicated tasks, that mainly require logic and more equipment.
>Louis Rossman
LOL. this motherfricker repaired a sex toy in one of his videos.
That was recent, and weird, but it worked to get clicks (you clicked it). I guess it was a joke about right-to-repair, which he later on got into, and affects far flung and more serious things like tractor repair by farmers themselves. I don't know if someone sent him that as a troll/gag or what, but whatever, he made a video about it and it got him views. He managed to rationalize the utility of making a video about it.
ask friends if they have broken electronics they would like to be fixed, but dont care if it gets completely fricked
it's how i started when my wife's brother constantly burn out amps, and bring them to me saying "if you can fix it - great, if not trash it, idc"
idk if they exist where you live
but here in europe we have these places where people drop off things that you can't just throw in the trash
a lot of good stuff gets thrown there, I just talked to one of the guys that work there and asked him if he could keep an eye out for whatever I needed and I've gotten so much stuff of all kinds, from old consoles, pc parts, tvs
yesterday some company threw like 5 brand new old stock monitors still in the box
I started with shit i already had that went to shit, like vidya consoles. Then i started picking cheat shit up at flea markets like A/V equipment. I lived in LA and had access to lots of high end video equipment that had become obsolete. Records players, receivers, vcrs, just shit i wanted to use and didn't have anything major wrong with them, just sat too long. so, usually needed a cleaning and maybe some caps replaced but more importantly plenty of service manuals available
Trash night in any city. Ask local metal scrapper to pick up XYZ for you. Craigslist free . recycle. Recycle lots.
Many flat tvs are free because not smarttv.
If you like check bigclive videos.
start with old stuff first. new shit almost never has schematics available. SMD repair is for very expensive shit. not really worth it for cheap shit.