Can AI Now Design PCBs That Just Work?

September 5, 2026 by Maya Posch 62 Comments

With the recent release of its GPT-6 Astra model, OpenAI explicitly pushed the claim that it is capable of designing complete circuit boards in KiCad, starting from a provided schematic and outputting a fully routed PCB that theoretically could be sent off to be manufactured. This of course raises the question whether this is just a nifty party trick that works under strictly controlled conditions like most auto-routing tools, or whether there’s more to it. In a recent [EEBench] blog post, OpenAI’s claims are put to the test.

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Pixel Watch 5 Demonstrates Good Repairability

September 5, 2026 by Maya Posch 18 Comments

Although we often find ourselves drowning in a seemingly unending sea of portable devices that are effectively e-waste once an internal component gives out, it’s good to remind ourselves that there are a few examples out there by large brands that manage to tick all the fancy feature boxes, while still being very much repairable. Case in point the Pixel Watch 5, a smart watch which much like its predecessor gets a 9/10 on [iFixit]’s repairability score.

No heat gun required, just undo the latch on the side of the watch. (Credit: iFixit, YouTube) — No heat gun required, just undo the latch on the side of the watch.

Despite featuring an IP68 rating, opening it is as easy as taking out a few screws to release its latch. This allows the back to swing open, with not a drop of glue in sight, just an O-ring gasket that keeps moisture out and can be reused many times. Digging into the guts, there are color-coded screws that guide one’s hand as the very modular design is taken apart in a matter of minutes.

Being able to simply unlatch the back, and also easily obtain spare parts are two aspects that are a very welcome sight indeed. Although it’s much easier to just glue everything together, something like this latch-and-gasket approach is something that we hope that more manufacturers will copy for these small devices.

It’s potentially also an idea for one’s next DIY smart watch project, as tempting as reaching for that tube of glue may seem.

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Fixing An Expensive Seagate LaCie Hard Drive Array

September 4, 2026 by Maya Posch 14 Comments

After the [Slow Mo Guys] acquired a 168 TB Seagate LaCie Thunderbolt 3-based RAID storage system back in 2019 to store their video footage, they were obviously slightly miffed when suddenly it would just refuse to power up. Naturally the device was now out of warranty, the product itself no longer produced and Seagate support was less than supportive, ergo they sent the device to [Mend it Mark] for an attempted repair.

At first inspection the device appeared to be basically unresponsive, with none of the four fans running and no signs of life other than a few lit LEDs on the main PCB after supplying power to it. After full disassembly and with no repair guide or schematics to go by [Mark] had to start from basics, first diagnosing whether all the power rails were turning on, which they weren’t.

Eventually this led to the NXP LPC11U6x-series MCU which acts as the main power management and monitoring chip in the system. [Mark] deduced that this MCU wasn’t turning on all the power rails because it was waiting for a signal from the fan controllers on the SATA backplane. With the MCU sending the right signals here, and the fans all working when directly supplied with power, ultimately it turned out that a single SI2319 or similar P-channel MOSFET in SOT-23 package near one of the fan connectors had gone faulty.

Replacing this one MOSFET seems to have fixed the RAID array, with it now happily powering up, although the real test will be once the [Slow Mo Guys] start shoving the HDDs back into it. Assuming that this was the sole fault in the system, then it was a very cheap fix in terms of materials. It’s a real shame that repair guides or schematics aren’t made available for devices like this, even if just after they stop being produced.

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Making A Pole Balance Itself With Propellers

September 4, 2026 by Maya Posch 19 Comments

A fun trick with a pole is to try to balance it so that it can stand on one end. This can be done in a few ways, such as by exerting a force on either end to counterbalance any force that threatens to make it fall over. The approach that [Peter Ryseck] chose was to cobble together what is effectively a flying drone for on top of a standing pole, without cheating such as by simply lifting it off the ground.

Getting to the point where the drone could react quickly enough to changes in the pole’s orientation was the hardest part, as the quieter, larger propellers also have a lot more inertia. This ruled out using 10″ blades, while triple 5″ blades seemed to work well enough. For the avionics a standard quadcopter control board and software is used, with the programming such that it’ll react appropriately without causing additional instabilities.

Naturally making this work took some trial and error, with issues like oscillations plaguing the system. One unexpected problem was that the pole – taken from a pool fishing net – was flexible enough to add its own instabilities to the system. In the video all these issues and their solutions are explained in detail, along with the ultimate result. One very neat solution here for example is to have the pole lean into the wind, which is a more stable configuration than insisting on having the pole be at a perfect ninety degrees with the ground.

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Repairing Traces On A Delidded Pentium III CPU Gone Wrong

September 4, 2026 by Maya Posch 13 Comments

Delidding a CPU involves removing the integrated heat spreader (IHS) that’s put over the bare die and the substrate that it is mounted on. The reason for this is usually to improve cooling performance, as the IHS is effectively a small heatsink between the die and the large heatsink, adding more problematic thermal interfaces. If delidding is done improperly it can cause severe damage to the substrate, as in the case of a very nice 1.3 GHz Tualatin Pentium III CPU that [Bits und Bolts] got in an eBay lot with nasty delidding damage.

With the delidding enthusiast presumably having used brute force and ignorance combined with a prying implement, around a dozen of tiny traces on the substrate got severed, requiring tedious trace repair to fix. After confirming that with the severed traces the CPU is indeed busted, enough of the soldermask is removed to make a repair.

Any traces that were still good got covered with soldermask, while for the remainders the thinnest available copper wire was used to create new traces. Although very much doable with a good microscope and a steady hand, this is definitely one of those things that’s much easier to prevent than to fix.

With IHSes having become standard on CPUs, delidding continues to this day, with increasing risks of severed traces and ripped-off capacitors should it go wrong. Although those newer CPU substrates are probably not repairable, repairing these older CPUs instead of tossing them as e-waste seems plausible at least.

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How To Avoid Getting Arc Flashed

September 3, 2026 by Maya Posch 48 Comments

After getting called out in the field to troubleshoot a large PV solar installation, [Derek] found himself suddenly in the midst of an arc flash, causing burns all over his face and arms. In a recent video he goes over the scenario that led up to this unfortunate event, as the holes in the Swiss cheese slowly lined themselves up, culminating in a high-current 480 VDC discharge nearly giving [Derek] a fatal embrace.

Despite being a professionally trained and certified professional, being called out to diagnose a weird issue on a slightly unusual solar farm’s electrical installation already worked against him. After having spent some time doing said troubleshooting, he finally tracked down the auxiliary transformer that normally powers the low-voltage gear, along with the spicy parts that should absolutely be unpowered after flipping the breaker into the ‘off’ position.

Testing for no power confirmed that the power had indeed been cut, which was when the wiring that normally connects the auxiliary transformer was spotted still lying just out of reach in the back of the cabinet. Clearly this was the cause behind one of the issues that the owner had been having.

This was when [Derek] decided to ~~go to the light~~ reach for this spool of wiring with a pair of pliers, into the – as it turned out – still live high-voltage side. One massive arc flash and hospital recovery later, [Derek] learned that the layout of the lines in the cabinet were different from usual, with the position of the roll of loose wiring being a potential hint that something was off.

The problem here was one of habituation, and the assumption that the system that he was working on was de-energized. The reason that he’s still with us being that the pliers acted as the current path instead of his body, and the arc flash cooked only the exposed parts of his skin, being mostly parts of his face and his hands.

Terrifyingly, [Derek] was working alone, and was forced to dial 911 somehow, with fingers that no longer registered on the iPhone’s touch screen on account of the skin having been turned into charcoal. While he doesn’t remember exactly how he managed to reach 911, it’s likely that the voice assistant finally connected him. The property owner also arrived and did what he could do to help before the ambulance arrived.

Overall, the lesson here is that complacency and assumptions are the killers here. Even if the layout of a high-voltage circuit is different in a way that makes no sense and there ought to be industry standards, when it’s you reaching into that cabinet such trivial details matter less than having ensured that there’s absolutely no power on anything, even if you know that there shouldn’t be. Reality only has to disagree with you once there.

[Derek] was lucky in the sense that the cabinet mostly shielded him from the arc flash’s intense heat, but over 19% of his skin was still burned, requiring skin grafts and an ongoing, very painful recovery. By sharing his story he hopes that he can prevent at least one other person reaching into that cabinet with some pliers for that ‘let me just quickly…’ moment.

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Exploring The Downsides Of Cooling Roof Paint

September 3, 2026 by Maya Posch 34 Comments

The idea of painting a roof or wall white in order to reflect sunshine and keep the building’s insides cool is hardly a new one, and even in the loosest interpretation of the word ‘white’ it generally works pretty well. This is also what [NightHawkInLight] found after using an off-the-shelf silicone-based coating for his shed’s tin roof, though with a few caveats.

One might say that this is mostly a problem for people who live in non-desert climates — like Michigan in this case — yet it’s undeniable that having a cooler indoors in a high-humidity climate will inevitably lead to a higher indoor humidity level. This was the first issue that was encountered, though it mostly meant that instead of running an air conditioner eight hours a day, a weekly dehumidifier session was required, which was at least less expensive in terms of kWh.

While the current silicone-based paint on the roof stays above ambient, in a subsequent test both [NightHawkInLight]’s DIY sub-ambient cooling paint and a commercial option get a sample panel down to around ambient temperature, which could cool down the roof even more. Of course, in this case the humidity issues would get worse, with likely condensation forming that would have to be dealt with.

Overall, a cooling paint on the roof is a pretty thing even if you’re not living in the desert, but you have to be able to tame the resulting humidity and condensation issues.

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