DIY cell phone battery replacement
Last Saturday, when I got home and took my cell phone—a moto g6—out of my briefcase, I noticed that the back glass had come loose. It had been in a hot car, and I thought that the heat had loosened the adhesive holding the back glass onto the phone. A closer inspection, though, showed that the battery had swollen, and that’s what was forcing the back glass off.
I called a couple of places to see if they could replace the battery, but neither had the battery in stock, and one wanted $50 for the repair, while the other wanted $100! Neither of those options appealed to me, so I searched for “moto g6 battery replacement.” One the things that popped up was this video:
It took me a little over a half hour to remove 17 small screws, pry out the battery (this was the hardest part of the whole operation), and screw it all back together again. I didn’t even have to apply any new adhesive to the back glass. There was enough remaining to hold everything together.
$6 desk mic
I found this article in today’s email from Nuts and Volts. Using a $1 LED desk lamp from Dollar Tree (shown at right) for the base, the author shows how he was able to keep the cost to under six dollars.
He notes, “No one will ever mistake my $6 desk mic for a $5,000 Neumann microphone or even a $500 Heil. However, I believe it complements the MicroBITX transceiver case I crafted from printed circuit board material, and it gets ‘good’ on-the-air reports.”
3D-Printed Weather Stations Could Enable More Science for Less Money
Researchers at the Argonne National Laboratory tested an inexpensive three-dimensionally (3D)-printed weather station, comparing its accuracy to a commercial-grade counterpart over eight months. University of Oklahoma scientists printed more than 100 station components from durable plastic, using guidance and open source plans from the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research’s 3D-Printed Automatic Weather Station Initiative. These parts were combined with low-cost sensors. Despite signs of equipment degradation and failure about five months into the experiment, the 3D-printed station’s temperature, pressure, rain, ultraviolet, and relative humidity measurements were comparable with those from a commercial station in the Oklahoma Mesonet network. Said Argonne’s Adam Theisen, “I didn’t expect that this station would perform nearly as well as it did. Even though components started to degrade, the results show that these kinds of weather stations could be viable for shorter campaigns.”
Bas PE4BAS says
Hello Dan, about the battery replacement, Many don’t dare to replace a battery of such a delicate piece of electronics. However, as HAMradio operator we have enough experience to do it ourself. It is not that difficult in the end. Replaced a few iphone batteries myself which did save me a lot of money. I can imagine however the phone repair centers ask that much money since you have to pay for the half hour repair which costs more as the battery itself. 73, Bas