HN Theater @HNTheaterMonth

Anecdotal evidence from a pinball factory in China from Strange Parts.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bnPhAn2_bjk&t=262s

Leases on buildings have gone up in price. Regulations have been increased. But labor is still very high quality.

After watching this video, I feel that high schools in the US and elsewhere would be better if they taught consumer electronics repair rather than shop class.

There's still a lot of empty space to put electronic factories in the US. There's just not a lot of skilled labor.

⬐ seanmcdirmid

> After watching this video, I feel that high schools in the US and elsewhere would be better if they taught consumer electronics repair rather than shop class

They'll never be able to compete with that one Uighur guy on the top floor of the Dinghao market in Zhongguancun. (this is how I got my Wii modded for 40 RMB, anyways)

⬐ jimjansen1

> labor is still very high quality. China wut?

⬐ hn_throwaway_99

> I feel that high schools in the US and elsewhere would be better if they taught consumer electronics repair rather than shop class.

Yikes, I hope you're joking! The cost of manufacturing consumer electronics has gone down so much that it's virtually impossible to have a viable repair business in the US - perhaps high-end laptops, Apple products, and very straightforward, limited repairs like phone screen repair, but that's about it.

As another anecdotal data point, I volunteer in a thrift store, and by far the hardest donation to sell is electronics - most of the time we just trash/recycle it, even if it is in very good condition. People aren't willing to pay very much at all for tech that is even just a couple years old. Thus, if the average age of a piece of electronics needing repair is, say, 2 years, by that point the product will have probably depreciated most of its value. At that point the vast majority of people will just buy the latest and greatest.

⬐ ryandrake

On the other hand I recently fixed my home theater receiver with a handful of 20 cent capacitors, saving a multi-hundred dollar repair bill and/or throwing away the whole receiver. Basic electronics knowledge and soldering skill could help anyone at home. Just like being able to do light plumbing and electrical work comes in handy and will save you lots of money.

⬐ Johnny555

But did you consider taking it to a repair shop?

Consumer electronics are very reliable, if the product lives through the warranty period, it's likely to last for years. Which leaves a small window of opportunity to service expensive and relatively new, but out of warranty products, and many repairs will be impossible or prohibitively expensive. It's not like the old days where a few drawers of spare parts could fix most problems, now much of the functionality for most products is embedded in a control board that's not available as a replacement, you have to scavenge it from another product (and hope that the hardware rev is compatible with yours).

So yeah, you can fix some things with discrete components, but you're pretty much limited to expensive products - you likely can't fix a $49 blu-ray player at a price you can make a living from.

⬐ ryandrake

Yea, I'm done making calls to repair shops. Like you alluded to, the cost of a pro repair shop's labor is usually more than the cost of throwing the product away and buying new. But the cost to repair is often minuscule + my time which is free (since I wouldn't otherwise be working).

⬐ fbonetti

> Basic electronics knowledge and soldering skill could help anyone at home. Just like being able to do light plumbing and electrical work comes in handy and will save you lots of money.

I'm skeptical of this. When a sink is clogged, the toilet won't flush, or a light switch doesn't work, there are only a handful of potential causes, all of which are well known and can be remedied after watching a Youtube video. When electronics fail, there could be a million reasons why. Most people are better off buying a new device and getting a warranty on it.

⬐ kokon

Just remind me of the story about a consultant that got paid a lot of money just to fix one line of code.

The cost is not on the component, but the knowledge to know which component to fix. That's not something that come cheap.

⬐ pessimizer

When electronics fail, it's generally a handful of causes, or one or two well-known design flaws in some particular model of device. I'm not sure I've ever had a device that I haven't repaired at least once, and I haven't had a laptop I haven't repaired at least a half-dozen times before upgrading.

You know what's usually useful? A youtube video of disassembly, digging up a service manual with google's help; pretty much the same as a toilet, but generally far safer than trying to fix a light switch.

⬐ jacquesm

> When electronics fail, it's generally a handful of causes, or one or two well-known design flaws in some particular model of device.

Once upon a time in the age before I dedicated my life to all things software repairing color tvs was one my sources of income. I respectfully disagree with your assertion, electronics can fail in very many different ways. All the way from 'rodent electrocuted in HV power supply' to passive component that never fails somehow in fact did fail.

Even something as mundane as a coil-over-a-resistor can fail if the conditions are right. And don't get me started on bad soldering connections, corroded connectors and a million other little details that can affect the functioning of a device to the point where the repairguy gets called.

This was before the days when oscilloscopes were portable, and unfortunately also before the days when I had a driving license. A typical house call would end up with a working TV or VCR and me learning yet another way in which things could fail.

Main tools: a couple of folders of schematics of the most commonly encountered models of TV/VCR (pick the right one before you leave, hope the user read the type plate correctly), a stack of matchboxes with passive components, some of the more common active components with enough spread that you could cover most cases, a soldering iron and a very large collection of parts scavenged from old TVs waiting for the opportunity to recycle them.

⬐ None

None

⬐ snaky

> there could be a million reasons why

Yes, but 990,000 of them would be capacitors. Check capacity and ESR, replace bad ones - done.