[HN Gopher] Fixing my monitor's power button
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Fixing my monitor's power button
Author : todsacerdoti
Score : 64 points
Date : 2025-01-26 09:01 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.lkhrs.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.lkhrs.com)
| captn3m0 wrote:
| I have the same stick button on my LG monitor, but it's been
| useless for a while now. I've been sticking to ddcutil for now,
| and I've lost those little flower pad things already. But the
| build quality of that button is quite bad.
| gorkish wrote:
| I have the same control doodad on my LG monitor. Not only does it
| apparently fail quite often, it sucks entirely to begin with and
| is an incredible regression in ergonomics and human interface. So
| stupid.
| etskinner wrote:
| It beats figuring out which of the 5 typical buttons are
| up/down/left/right, in my opinion. It's only the build quality
| that seems to be the issue, not the concept
| gorkish wrote:
| In truth it actually does have an ergonomics issue. Since the
| button position is orthogonal to the screen and mounted
| upside down, the left and right directions are evident but up
| and down directions are ambiguous.
|
| It turns out you 'pull' the thing toward you for 'down' and
| 'push' it away from you for 'up'. Did you guess right?
| 05 wrote:
| > It turns out you 'pull' the thing toward you for 'down'
| and 'push' it away from you for 'up'. Did you guess right?
|
| The only thing dumber than that is that DJI remotes use the
| same braindead scheme to control camera tilt: pushing the
| wheel moves the camera up and pulling on it - moves it
| down. Anyone who piloted anything would, of course, agree
| that it's insane (you push the stick to go down and pull on
| it to go up). I had to open mine up and swap the wires
| because DJI in their infinite wisdom didn't make that
| configurable in their app.
| jjice wrote:
| Anecdotally, I'm using a 27" 4K LG monitor I got in about mid
| 2017, so going on eight years now, and I've never had an issue
| with the nub, except that when the monitor turns on, it will
| automatically pull up the nub menu after a few seconds, so if
| you go to change the input at the wrong time, you'll
| accidentally shut it off.
|
| Not saying you're wrong about the ergonomics, but I personally
| like it.
| glitchc wrote:
| Is a new button assembly from LG not available? The JST connector
| suggests it was designed to be easily replaced.
| jasonjayr wrote:
| Personally, I woulden't even both for internal part requests
| like that, especially when devices are often stamped "no user
| servicable parts inside".
|
| If you have the know how to rework PCB's like this person (and
| all the equipment already on hand), I would estimate that it's
| the same amount of effort to just fix it like this yourself,
| than to seek out the manufacturer, communicate and identify the
| internal part, and arrange payment.
| gigaflop wrote:
| I found a component that looks like it would be able to replace
| the one pictured, but can't be sure without measurements:
| https://www.mouser.com/ProductDetail/SparkFun/COM-10063?qs=W...
| kbelder wrote:
| I remember when I was young, fixing the power button for my
| Commodore monitor with a switch salvaged from a hairdryer. It
| just hung off the monitor, dangling with several inches of extra
| wire.
| stronglikedan wrote:
| I hope you loosely wrapped one of the connections to the switch
| with a slightly too small piece of electrical tape.
| josefritzishere wrote:
| Given the opportunity I usually install a heavy toggle switch
| when a cheap plastic PCB switch fails. I don't think I could pull
| that off with a 5-option joystick like that.
| gigaflop wrote:
| For something like this, I feel like the work to investigate the
| guts of the switch mechanism was overkill. I'd rather desolder it
| wholly, and try to find some component to replace it with. I have
| little faith in non-break-itude of teeny things when handled
| slightly incorrectly.
|
| That being said, I once replaced the thumbsticks on an X360
| controller due to stick drift. It was very fun to destructively
| open up the old mechanisms and see how they worked.
|
| I also operate my sit/stand desk with a pair of tweezers, by
| shorting some pins on a breakout board.
| wpm wrote:
| >I also operate my sit/stand desk with a pair of tweezers, by
| shorting some pins on a breakout board.
|
| And here I thought I was nuts using a bench power supply
| clamped onto some loose jumper wires to charge my wireless
| keyboard/trackpad.
| gigaflop wrote:
| Hey now, the electronics of the sit/stand controller are
| safely housed in a little cardboard box (that the BoB came
| in). The breakout board sticking out is labeled "FPC-10P
| 0.5MM", and I only need 3 of the 10 pins. The others are
| unused by the controller.
|
| > And here I thought I was nuts using a bench power supply
| clamped onto some loose jumper wires to charge my wireless
| keyboard/trackpad.
|
| Also, at your point, couldn't one bodge something together
| with a little charging circuit or "variety pack of M/F
| connectors on wires" from Sparkfun? If you're willing to cut
| away some material, you could build your _own_ special
| charging port, so that the loose wires end up outside of the
| device.
| s1mon wrote:
| Agreed. The tolerances inside a 5-way stick switch like that
| are so tight, just manually disassembling and reassembling a
| brand new one is likely to make it flakey. It would be much
| better to find the right replacement component and desolder the
| dead one and replace it. The challenge would likely be
| identifying the part and getting a single replacement part. If
| it happens to be something available from Digikey or Mouser
| that's great, but there's always a chance that it's a slightly
| tweaked version of a "standard" part or even something that was
| made only for LG. I found some parts from E-Switch and Alps on
| Mouser quickly that look visually similar, but I would need
| access to the original PCBA to evaluate dimensions etc...
|
| https://www.mouser.com/ProductDetail/E-Switch/JS1400BFQ?qs=E...
|
| https://www.mouser.com/ProductDetail/Alps-Alpine/SKRHACE010?...
| unwind wrote:
| _[...] and the golden tube that goes pop (I can't remember the
| name) couldn't vacuum up the solder [...]_
|
| It's called a solder sucker amazingly enough (perhaps desoldering
| pump is the more formal name). Very handy when they work.
| Liftyee wrote:
| Surprising to find a post about the same series of LG monitor as
| the one I'm reading it on. The power button on mine hasn't
| failed... yet?
|
| Very brave to go disassembling the button component itself, and
| it paid off. Personally I wouldn't spend that time, but the worst
| case is ordering a new button part either way, so I might try it
| in future.
| guyzero wrote:
| Impressive that it was fixable in the end! Quite brave to keep
| taking it apart, although I suppose the monitor couldn't get any
| worse at that point.
| ryandrake wrote:
| Are there any examples of modern monitors that actually have
| understandable and reliable buttons for power and configuration?
| Looking at my Dell monitor, I have six tiny, identical, unlabled
| buttons under the bezel, and a slightly bigger, slightly
| different-looking power button. All made of cheesy, ready-to-
| break plastic.
|
| For the unlabeled control buttons, you have to press one and then
| a little on-screen GUI pops up with icons that barely tell you
| what they do. When you choose an option on the on-screen GUI, the
| function of each button changes. There is about 1 second of
| latency between when you push any of these buttons and when it
| does something. Absolutely awful.
| NavinF wrote:
| Pretty much all high end monitors have a little joystick
| under/behind them, have decent UI latency, and come with vendor
| software for changing settings without physically touching the
| monitor. This is done over I2C so it should be pretty easy to
| reverse engineer. Try searching "monitor ddc control", it might
| work out of the box for your monitor
| reboot81 wrote:
| I use https://github.com/kfix/ddcctl to change inputs on my
| external Acer EB275K (bmiiiprx) from my Mac. Brightness can also
| be adjusted. Simplified the usage by creating shortcuts in
| Keyboard Maestro that runs short ddctl commands.
| morellt wrote:
| Love this guy's Schiit stack!
| 1970-01-01 wrote:
| >With the rear housing off I had access to the power button
| housing--it's the white plastic thing at the bottom center of the
| panel. While the logic board and power components are covered by
| a metal box, I must emphasize that even while unplugged it's
| still possible to encounter spicy levels of current lurking
| inside the capacitors in the power supply. Be careful if you try
| this at home.
|
| This was true when CRTs monitors were around, and also if you're
| tearing into an old plasma screen. However, the power supply
| inside a new LED or OLED flat screen monitor will drop straight
| to zero after just a few seconds.
| fsckboy wrote:
| just to be clear, the stray shock potential of a CRT had to do
| with the flyback circuit for tube itself, not the power supply
| near the power button/power conditioning.
| 1970-01-01 wrote:
| Flybacks are deadly when live, however the tube itself was
| also a massive cap.
|
| Sources for those that need it:
|
| https://repair.wiki/w/CRT_General_Repairs
| somat wrote:
| You don't see them much any more, but cold cathode backlight
| lcd panels also have a high voltage section to drive the ccfl's
|
| And thank goodness, I like to tear things apart when they
| break, I am not very good at fixing them but finding the root
| cause helps me find closure. anyway, nearly every single time
| an lcd would die in that time period(beginning of lcd flat
| panels to 2015 or so) I would open it up to find the high
| voltage control chip smoked.
| Jzush wrote:
| I had a cheapy Samsung curved 27inch 1080p monitor that use to
| live in a tax office. It didn't work so it was given to me to see
| if I could fix it. I noticed I couldn't plug in an HDMI cable
| without the back of the monitor popping the cable out of it's
| socket. The only way to get the HDMI cable to plug in all the way
| was to angle the monitor down at the table. If I try to face it
| up, the bezel tents out and pushes the cable out of socket.
|
| I put the monitor in a corner and left it for around a year. A
| year later I get another similar monitor with a broken OSD nipple
| like the one in this article. I noticed that it had no problem
| with cables being pushed out of socket. I looked at the back of
| the monitor and saw that there's a little screw just above the
| inputs on the back of the new monitor.
|
| So I snag the screw from the new, broken monitor and try to screw
| it in to the old 'working' monitor in hopes that it would fix the
| shell, and it won't screw in. WTF right? Same monitor, same
| model.. No screw hole but there was a place for a screw, just no
| hole. So I pull the bezel up enough to notice that there actually
| IS a threaded screw hole behind the shell, there's just no hole
| in the back for the screw to go in. So I break out a drill, make
| my own hole and the screw screws right in. Perfectly fixed.
|
| First time I ever fixed a monitor with a drill.
| rkagerer wrote:
| Anyone had to fix the power button on a Dell U3011T? Advice /
| tips welcome.
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(page generated 2025-01-28 23:01 UTC)