Ejaad-Nama 0x16: The Centennial Light
Ejaad-Nama (Urdu: Letters of Invention). A fortnightly newsletter about Science, Electronics, Makers, DIY, and everything technical. We talk about lemons, acid batteries, and anything in between.
Ejaad-Nama is the word from the Urdu language which means Letters of Invention. Ejaad-nama is about improving scientific literacy and normalizing it. It’s a step towards removing the barriers to learn science and develop further interest and excitement.
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Fire Station 6, 4550 East Ave., Livermore, California.
The address is the current home to the longest burning light bulb.
The light bulb was first installed in Year 1901 AD. The above picture shows the lamp burning and the time stamp at the time of my writing this newsletter. The bulb has been shining for 120 years which is why it’s called the centennial light. The website updates the picture every 30 seconds that you can see here.
So Watts up with the light?
While I was reading the journey of this light bulb, I noticed how none of the lights I have purchased promised that kind of longevity. The last time I went to buy car headlights from the Home depots, most of the lights were advertised as Long life lasting up to 1000 hours. That’s just a tad bit more than a month.
Phoebus Cartel
The “1000 hours” reminded me of the notorious Phoebus Cartel: The Great light Bulb Conspiracy. (Here is the link to the documentary if you are not a reader.)
The cartel consisting of Osram, General Electric, Phillips, and other manufacturers was a supervisory body that controlled both quantity and quality of production of the lamps. The cartel assigned territories and assigned quotas.
However, the biggest impact they were able to bring to modern times was to work hard in engineering a light bulb that would reliably fail after 1000 hours of operation. Previously, an average light bulb would last up to 2500 hours or more. The reduction in the lifetime was touted as more brighter performance. Several memos between the companies show how research and effort was put into a lights bulb’s filament, material, and shape to limit its life reliably to the 1000 hour number. Samples from different suppliers were sent to Switzerland to test the lifetime and fines were imposed if the light bulb life was shorter or longer than the specified limit.
So Watt now?
The Phoebus cartel may be no more, but the practices may seem to have lingered on (Conspiracy Theory Alert!). The last reliable modern device that comes to my mind is in the form of the Nokia 3310 which got featured as Terminator of Cell Phones in its first-ever meme on Reddit which was followed by plenty of other Memes. Here is the video on youtube to Nokia 3310 vs A Bullet.
The phones of that era came with replaceable batteries. You would simply open the cover, replace the battery and get the phone working again. However, modern phones have become very difficult to disassemble. If you manage to disassemble them with specialized tools you bought, It is usually very difficult to find original replacement parts. Most manufacturers will ask you to visit their authorized repair shop which tends to be more expensive than the unauthorized ones. I discussed this on my first Right to Repair newsletter when I tried to fix my iPhones broken screen costing $70 rather than paying $149 to Apple.
Right To Repair - Part III
(Read Part I here and Part II here)
This is where it’s easy to see how the Right to Repair movement is the David in the Goliath vs David story. Manufacturers have often shown disinterest in the repairs because it is not their main source of revenue. They have often gone out of their way (Phoebus Cartel) to make the repair difficult. This can be in the form of not being able to source the components or simply not covered in the warranty.
However, it does not really take a genius to fix the issues. I went through a lot of adverts on eBay Marketplace to search for defective iPhones. I repeated the same for PlayStation 4s.
eBay Listings for Broken iPhones - An example of Bad repairability
Here are the most common issues on the phones I could see (I searched for some statistics to corroborate what I see on eBay):
Cracked/Scratched Screens - 56% of the Phone repairs
Phone does not charge/turn on - about 22% of repairs are about non-working batteries.
Water Damage - Some eBay Interactions suggested that phones do not turn on after they spilled coffee, water, or juices over them.
Non-functioning functionality - This is usually the home button, FaceID, touch screen not working, USB charging not working.
You do not need to be an engineer to fix these issues. Most of the time, the repair to the above problems is simple if you just had the tools and components. The local repairman may have the tools, but may not have the components. Or when they are able to do the repairs, the software bricks the phone altogether.
Because of this reason: (from the same study)
Two-thirds of consumers said they wouldn’t repair a damaged phone if it still worked, while 59% said they would upgrade their device rather than fix an old one.
No wonder the electronic waste has reached 58 million metric tons this year.
eBay Listings for Broken PS4 - An example of Good repairability
For the PlayStation 4s, The eBay listing for defective pieces were interesting:
The broken PS4 market is a seller’s market. There were more listings for people looking to buy broken PlayStation 4s than people who are trying to sell their junk. This made bargaining very hard with the seller. The seller always had someone paying more than me for a broken PS4.
Most sellers did not include Hard Drive. That’s understandable a HDD might have their account and credit card details.
The blu-ray drive was not working - These devices were expensive as people don’t really use the disc anymore. I wouldn’t bother fixing these either.
The Controller does not work - Usually, a Bluetooth/wifi module requires a replacement. This requires special soldering equipment. Also, you can only buy replacement modules that are desoldered from other broken PS4s.
Broken HDMI Connector - A good heat gun and standard HDMI connector is all you need to fix.
PS4 does not turn on - Check all the Capacitors if they are not shorted. Otherwise, replacing the power supply is as easy as tightening the screws.
I ended up buying two PlayStations in the end and fixing both in 4 hours of working time. Repairmen across the world have created a very well documented wiki regarding PS4 which lists all the variants of PS4, their mainboards, chipsets, software, and debugging tools. The wiki also consists of firmware dumps across many PlayStation4 devices so that you can check if the firmware is corrupted. This probably explains the high demand for broken PS4s.
What’s the Takeaway from both examples?
The right to repair legislation is about stopping modern electronics to become like Pheobus Cartel. This can be done by making sure that repair resources(replacement components and documentation) are available to both consumers and third-party repairmen. Not only does it extends the life of electronics and reduces e-waste, but it also creates a lot of jobs for both young students and professionals.
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