Devices

Fixing my New 3DS …

So, the title there says New 3DS, which is is the “New 3DS” but it’s also New, in the sense that I bought it at the start of January.  It’s like 3 or 4 weeks old.  Then I broke it on accident.  It’s taken me years to get around to saving the money to buy one of these, not so much because I don’t have the money, but because I wanted to know it was at a point in it’s console life cycle that it was worth buying.  If it has been say, $50 cheaper, I’d have bought one years ago.  Also, unlike all of my previous Nintendo based hand helds, I wanted to wait to get the “improved version”.  I have a Game Boy, a Game Boy Advanced, a Nintendo DS, but they were all the first gen models.  I didn’t care for the 3D gimmick, so I passed on the 3DS.  Well now they have the horribly branded “New 3DS” and in my case, it’s the XL version, because I like having a big honking screen.

I’ve played it pretty regularly since buying it.  This is kind of the problem with my argument of “waiting for the right moment”.  My track record with Nintendo hand helds has always been amazing.  I measure this by one real metric, how many games do I finish on them?  I’m pretty sure I’ve completed every game I own for Nintendo’s handhelds since the Game Boy, and I own a lot.  Contrast this with say, Steam, where I’ve beaten like 20% of my 1000+ game Steam Library.

On a side note story, that’s related here, the water out of the faucet at work is awful, there’s crap floating in it and it’s scummy and possibly not healthy (probably is for legal reasons though).  So in order to make my coffee each morning, I carry a metal water bottle with water from home, usually in my lunch box.

Anyway, a week or so ago, I put my 3DS in my bag I carry and went off to work.  On this particular day, I didn’t bring a lunch, so I just had my laptop bag and no lunch box.  I stuck my water bottle in the side pocket of my bag and drove off to work.  Upon arrival I found the bottom of my bag was wet and the top of the water bottle was not fully attached.  Incidentally, the water bottle was also empty.

I headed into the office to assess the damage here.  Headphones, some notes, the bottom of the bag and my 3DS were all wet.  Bummer.  I took everything that was damp and strung it around to dry out for a while and went about my day.  Later, as things were drying I tested the 3DS.  This was my fatal mistake, it turned on, but the cursor on the bottom of the screen was flipping constantly (due to water inside making an electrical contact) and when I tried to turn if off I got a cryptic message flashed up about “There is some kind of problem something something) before it turned off, for good.

I set it out to dry some more, hoping this would correct the issue.  It still didn’t turn on some time later, so I set about opening it up.  I’d already removed the back cover and battery, now it was time to crack open the case.  It turns out it’s a pretty simple task thankfully, there’s maybe 8 small screws holding the case shut. You’ll also need to remove any SD cards.

Side not to anyone trying to do this, there are two small ribbon cables along the top edge of the system that come off with the back cover.  These operate the shoulder buttons.  To actually remove the cover, you must lift the top edge gently a bit, so they the whole thing can slide down and over the headphone jack, then the cover rolls/flips towards the upper side of the 3DS, minding these cables along the way.  The cables can be removed and may even pop off, this is ok so long as they don’t get damaged.  They ultimately need to be removed anyway, using some small pliers or a screw driver, to remove the black square from the main part of the 3DS.  These connectors are designed to be removed and reinserted easily.

After removing the cover, I had a nice view of the inside of the 3DS.

On the plus side, once inside, things were not as bad as they might seem.  The way the handheld sits in my bag, only one end of it got any sort of water (the left end shown above).  On the minus side, there was a lot of water, like I had to get paper towels and dry it up all over inside, including removing the face buttons.  To get to the underside water, I had to also remove that board on the left side, it has 5 screws, 4 in the central area, and one near the bottom ribbon cable.

Once everything was dried, I reassemble it and tried to turn it on again, with no success.  So I opened it up again for a deeper inspection.  This was when I found what I should have noticed originally, the painfully obvious blown out components on the board.

Nothing else inside seemed to be damaged at all and all of the moisture was on this end of the console.  So I figured I’d look into replacing this power board (the batter connects to this board).  I figure spending $50 on a new board would be better than $200 on a new 3DS.  Fortunately, these boards can be found all over online, and even more fortunately, it only cost me around $15 to order one, a real deal non knockoff one too.

A week later, I had the new power board, time to swap.  It’s pretty straight forward as well, I removed all of the screws first.  Next there are two small ribbon cables that attach to the board, the one broad orange one and another smaller one at the top for the secondary nubbin that is on the New 3DS models.  The large orange one was simple, since the new board came with a new ribbon cable, potentially damaging the old one wasn’t a problem.  I was still careful to slide it out of the end on the main part of the 3DS.  After removing it, the gray bar is able to flip up so the new cable can be slid in and aligned, then the gray bar snaps back down to secure it.

The second smaller cable was a bit trickier, but due to it’s small size, I was able to flip the bar piece holding it down up using a small screw driver.  Once these cables were swapped, the new board gets screwed in.  Carefully reattach the two cables on the case cover for the ribbon cables, there is a natural orientation to these when the cover is attached, though it’s slightly twisted around with it removed.  Once everything was reassembled and screwed down, I reinserted the battery for the moment of truth of powering the system back on.

Which was successful!

I’m not saying this will fix any broken 3DS, there’s all sorts of other issues that could come up, especially with water.  This is more just how I was troubleshooting and fixed mine.

 

 

Sometimes it Just Takes a Reset to Clean up Your Phone

wp_ss_20161101_0007I’m not sure what it is about mobile operating systems, they just don’t always clean up after themselves and seem to be awful about eating up their limited space sometimes.  I can only assume that there is some sort of glitch and a large batch of updates or temporary files don’t get deleted properly.  In Windows or Linux on “real” computer, It’s the sort of thing that I’d easily track down and delete on my own.  Mobile operating systems tend to be locked down way more preventing users from poking around in the system files, or anywhere beyond the basic documents folders really.

A while ago, my wife kept having issues with her Kindle Fire tablet filling up with space.  Even after cleaning off Photos and Videos, which she had quite a few of, there still was never quite enough space.  It’s only 8gig to start with, which isn’t much, so choices for apps and such have to be carefully weighed.  Eventually in frustration I did a factory reset and voila, problem solved.  The “System” block went from close to 6 gig down to somewhere around 3-4 gig, considerably more manageable to be sure.

I had a similar experience on my Windows Phone recently as well.  It kept filling up despite my effort to prune more and more apps.  Eventually it stopped taking screen shots and it had tons of weird freeze ups.  Once again, in desperation, I did a reset.  Now it’s floating around 5 gig of space used (of 8 gig) and I’ve reloaded most of the apps I had previously needed to prune.

It also runs much more smoothly.

This isn’t a process to be taken lightly however.  In my case, I keep most of my data backed up through One Drive or Amazon to my NAS, and Apps can easily be redownloaded (often automatically).  Probably the biggest hurdle I had with my phone was dealing with my 2 Factor Authentication App.  It doesn’t back up or sync since that would be a security issue, and I have a ton of services running through it.  In many cases I simply changed the 2 Factor Auth to run through SMS instead of the App, in others it was easiest just to temporarily disable it.

This all needed to be done before hand.  Many services won’t let you easily disable or change your 2 factor settings without the current codes, for good reason.  If you wipe out your authenticator, you’ll have no way to get those codes.  I had to deal with this first hand after the SD card I was using crapped out on me, taking my authenticator with it.  In at least one case I had to call into support and talk to a person to recover my account.

My suggestion, from doing this some in the past with other devices, start making a list of Apps you want to reinstall.  Then remove them.  This lets you actively track if there is anything like an Authenticator that may need to be dealt with.  After you can’t uninstall anymore apps, start checking whats left, photo galleries, Email, SMS, Call logs, checking for loose ends as you go.

It can be a pain but doing a factory refresh on an ailing space strained device can really help out to clear the cruft that seems to build up around the edges.

Internet of Things, Internet of Stuff

I wanted to take some time to touch on my every changing collection of Internet of Things style devices.  Honestly, it’s kind of iffy what constitutes an “IOT” device, but for the most part I’m sticking with “cheap” and “non traditional computing devices”.

The chief player among these are of course…

The Raspberry Pi

I’m up to 5 Raspberry Pis, a B+, two B2s, one B3, and one Pi Zero.  I have already discuss these quite a bit so they don’t need a ton of additional discussion.  The B+ still operates my DNS/DHCP server, one B2 still runs my IRC stuff, one B2 still runs a Minecraft server.  I actually have not yet come up with a good use for the B3 and Zero yet.  I’ve started messing with Windows 10 IOT on the B3 a bit and there is a Retro Gaming GameBoy project using the Pi Zero floating around on Reddit I may have a go at.

Arduino

If Raspberry Pi is the king of IOT, then Arduino is definitely the Queen. I’ve kind of dropped out of doing Arduino projects a bit and dismantled most of the ones I had built.  Other than adding a WiFi enabled board to my set (by mistake, I thought I was ordering a Shield not a board), not much has changed on my Arduino library.

i did try to build a little digital hourglass project I found online but it’s not going super great.  Stay Tuned for More

Next Thing’s CHIP

CHIP is still one of the most annoying and impossible to search for terms online.  I’m up to three CHIPs now, I’ve received my second Kickstarter CHIP and my VGA DIP.  I’ve still been having some bad luck getting my CHIPs to do much of anything.  I tried to build an Amazon Alexa with no luck in the end after a ton of troubleshooting.  I’ve been trying to get Synergy combined and running on one to let it work with my multi monitor set up.

Now that the Kickstarter campaign is more or less finished and the CHIP is reaching a wider audience I’m hoping it starts to get more support online.

Remix Mini

Another kickstarter product, the Remix Mini is a small computer that runs Android as a desktop.  It works pretty well, I mostly used it last year while traveling for work in the Hotel Room.  I have not touched it since, for one simple, stupid reason.  The HDMI output doesn’t support any of my HDMI to DVI cables.  I can’t plug it into a regular monitor, so I just have… not used it.  I could plug it into a TV but it’s effectively a simple desktop machine and doesn’t work as well for a “lean back” experience.  Maybe if I had a wireless KB and Mouse it would work better.

It’s a shame to because I was really looking forward to this one and it runs a lot of my apps surprisingly well.

ChromeCast

I picked up a Chromecast last year on Black Friday. I used it a bit but in the end, it’s ended up in a drawer.  It’s just too much of a hassle and it caused too many problems.  First off, the hassle.  My crappy old Nexus 7 is partially to blame here but in general the lack of any built in interface is just a flat out pain.  Having to dig out my tablet to use it is a pain.

Worse yet, it was causing problems with the Wireless in the house.  I disabled guest mode which eliminated the problem (eliminating the interference) but it’s still kind of lame that it was an issue to start with.

Kindle Fire Stick

A more recent addition to the network, I added a Kindle Fire Stick.  This is effectively the same as the Chromecast, without the hassle and bull shit of needing a separate device to use it.  It’s not completely without it’s issues but it works pretty well.  The main problem I’ve had is that it loses signal, a lot.  It doesn’t work as all directly hooked to my HDMI switch and at this point it’s cabled out and laying out on the floor behind everything to get it away from any interference.

It runs Amazon videos, which I don’t really use, it runs Netflix, which is used a lot.  It also works well with the fact that I buy my MP3s primarily through Amazon.  Another nice bonus, I use Amazon Cloud to backup all of my Photos, so they are all available through the Fire Stick now to view on the TV.

SteamBox

 Another newer addition is the SteamBox.  Specifically, the cheap streaming box.  It works pretty nicely.  I haven’t had a chance to really put it through the loops yet but my first tests worked well.  I’ll probably do a more in depth write up at some point on it.