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Phone repaired

My Nexus 5 arrived a couple of days ago after I shipped it back to LG to have the power button issue repaired. After it was received at LG, the post-assessment email said the phone was out of warranty by date code, and that I could have the phone repaired for $45, or have them do a full refurb for $179. I opted for just the repair and a few days later it was shipped out. Total turn around time from mailing out to coming back was 13 days.

Unpacked the phone, popped the SIM card back in and booted it up. Took a while, but the phone worked just fine, just like new. It came back with 5.1.1 (Lollipop) installed, but quickly picked up two 5.1.1 updates, and the next morning my phone was telling me the 6.0 update was ready for downloading.

Getting all the apps reinstalled was a bit of a long process, but went pretty smoothly. Fortunately I had recently backed up all the important stuff, so data wise I didn’t really lose much.

While the Nexus 5 was off being repaired, I put my S2 back into service as a wifi only device, which worked out reasonably well. Using Android Beam to transfer (via NFC) the few files I had collected/modified back to the Nexus 5 worked out pretty well, and was nice and easy.

Now the Nexus 5 is pretty much fully restored and practically feels like a new device.

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Lollipop updates

A while back, I took the plunge and rooted my Transformer Prime tablet. Found an Android 4.2 (Jelly Bean) ROM to install and installed it along with a new recovery ROM. Worked pretty well and made the tablet fun to use again.

The Galaxy S2 got the Cyanogenmod treatment with CM11, but for the past few months, ROM updates have been relatively infrequent, and there were no signs of Android 5 (Lollipop) ever making it to the S2.

With Android 6 (Marshmallow) being pushed out to phones, I decided it was time to bring the tablet and S2 a little further into the future. The XDA Developers forums is a good place to find builds of new ROMS for all kinds of devices. The Transformer Prime got the KatKiss 5.1.1 ROM along with a fresh TWRP recovery ROM while the S2 got the Candy5 5.1.1 ROM as well as the TWRP recovery.

The ROM install on the S2 was pretty painless, and seems to be running pretty well so far. Thought the S2 might have some issues running Lollipop, but so far so good.

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Phone power button failure

Well phooey. My Nexus 5 appears to have suffered the same hardware failure my S2 suffered a couple years ago. The phone doesn’t do anything when I push the power button, although sometimes if I push it hard enough it will come on. Plugging the phone in causes it to power up, flash the Google logo on the screen, and then it immediately shuts off and begins the cycle all over again. It doesn’t even stay on long enough to get into recovery mode. That also means I can’t back up or copy anything off the phone.

None of the usual incantations have helped, so it looks like a call to the Google help center is in store. It’s a couple months out of warranty now, so I doubt there will be anything they can do aside from have me send it back to LG and pay for them to repair the phone.

Another alternative is to see if any of the local cell phone fix-it places around here can do that kind of repair (or just replace the board the switch is on) or to find a switch or mother board and replace it myself.

Off to deal with people on the phone.

Update: Decided to ship it back to LG for repair. After speaking with a Google tech support person and doing a bit of troubleshooting with him, he established that it was out of Google’s warranty coverage period and put me in touch with LG support. At LG, the first person I spoke to said their warranty coverage was 15 months from purchase, and the repair would probably be covered under warranty. Had to dig around my email archive to find the proof of purchase they needed (it had to have the IMEI number), and when I called back the second person said the warranty coverage was 15 months from the manufacture date. So now I have no idea if the repair is going to be covered under the manufacturer warranty or not, but they have the info they need so I’ll let them sort it out there. I’ll have the repair done regardless of whether it’s covered or not.

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Communicator panel

I’ve had one of these Star Trek door chime panels hanging up on the wall for quite a while now.

Star Trek communicator panel

It’s pretty cool, although rather limited. The button on the front plays the Star Trek communicator panel sound. When motion sensors on the side are triggered, the panel can play the door swooshing sound, a red alert klaxon sound or no sound (determined by the sliding switch on the front).

Over the weekend, the thought popped into my head that I should get a second one and modify it to also function as a wireless intercom system. Push the button, it plays the communicator panel sound and activates the intercom. Add a microphone behind the speaker grill and some LEDs to light up the white indicator box when the intercom is active. How cool would that be?

I’ve been pondering ways to do this. Cannibalizing an old intercom system or maybe even a couple of FRS radios should be a relatively easy turnkey solution. Something Arduino based using a Pro Mini or Pro Micro with some kind of low power FM transmitter might work too, but require considerably more effort to develop. I haven’t opened mine up so I don’t know how much room there is to cram stuff into.

I’ll let it spin around in my head for a while, maybe hit a couple of thrift stores to see if there’s anything interesting to work with. With the move coming up, it will probably be a while before I have much time to work on this.

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New house? Sure, why not!

There’s something to be said for fresh starts. Connie and I decided a few weeks ago that it was time for a new start for our lives together, beginning with a new house. It’s a little sooner than we initially planned on, but we also had a few other reasons pushing us toward this.

Connie had some specific things she was looking for, and we managed to find that in a new development going up between Moncks Corner and Goose Creek. We went up there just to have a look around and by the time we left, we had:

  • met a nice couple who had been living there for a few months
  • got a tour of their house
  • toured a couple of the model homes with the sales agent guy
  • decided to buy a house.

Talk about your impulse buys!

Being new construction and since the house hasn’t been built yet, we have the opportunity to add a few additional features to the house to make (radio) life a little easier.

  • Requested a 2″ conduit running from outside terminating in the room we chose for the shack. This will let us run coax out to the antenna(s) without having to drill holes in the house or propping a window open
  • Distribution panel for phone/TV coax. Later after we get settled, I’ll work on running Cat5 through the same conduits and have network drops along with the cable outlets.
  • Dedicated 120V and 220V outlets in the shack
  • Extra lights and outlets in the garage where the workshop will be
  • Move a few doors around
  • Garage insulation

The new house will be a fair bit smaller than the current one (1500ish sq ft vs 1880 sq ft) but I think we’ll actually gain a little more storage and functional space thanks to taller kitchen cabinets and additional wall space. We’ll also get the back yard fenced so that the dogs can run around outside (they’ll love that). We’ll lose our current library space so the bookshelves and their contents will end up getting split up to various places.

The commute between work will be significantly longer than the 10 minutes I have now, but it’s something I can live with. It will be a good excuse to put a mobile radio in the car and get in on whatever drive-time repeater chatter there is around here.

For now, the new place feels a little bit like being out in the middle of nowhere, even though there are a lot of other new-ish developments in the area. Nothing is terribly far away though. Goose Creek and Moncks Corner are both about 15 minutes away along some of the back roads. When we head out on road trips, there will also be a little less city to wind through before hitting the open highway.

It’s a big thing to buy a house, and just a little bigger thing to worry about having to sell one first, but after all the dust settles the new house should actually be better for the finances since we’ll end up with a slightly smaller mortgage and more energy efficiency than the current one.

Now we just need pack everything up, do a little bit of fixing up and renovating of this house (I don’t think we need to do a whole lot) and hope we can sell it fairly quickly.