WiFi Status Indicator Keeps Eye On The Network

These days, most of us take the instant availability of a high-speed link to the Internet for granted. But despite all of the latest technology, things still occasionally go pear-shaped — meaning that blistering fiber optic connection you’ve got to the world’s collected knowledge (not to mention, memes) can still go down when you need it the most.

After suffering some connectivity issues, [Arnov Sharma] decided to put together a little box that could alert everyone in visual range to the status of the local router. It won’t fix the problem, of course, but there’s a certain value to getting timely status updates. Using a 3D printed enclosure and a couple of custom PCBs, the build is fairly comprehensive, and could certainly be pressed into more advanced usage if given the appropriate firmware. If you’ve been thinking of a Internet-connected status indicator, this is certainly a project worth copying studying closely.

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Investigating A Defective USB Power Bank Module

Call us old fashioned, but we feel like when you buy a piece of hardware, the thing should actually function. Now don’t get us wrong, like most of you, we’re willing to put up with the occasional dud so long as the price is right. But when something you just bought is so screwed up internally that there’s no chance it ever could have ever worked in the first place, that’s a very different story.

Unfortunately, that’s exactly what [Majenko] discovered when he tried out one of the USB-C power bank modules he recently ordered. The seemed to charge the battery well enough, but when he plugged a device into the USB output, he got nothing. We don’t mean just a low voltage either, probing with his meter, he became increasingly convinced that the 5 V pin on the module’s IP5306 chip literally wasn’t connected to anything.

So close, yet so far away.

Curious to know what had gone wrong, he removed all the components from the board and started sanding off the solder mask. With the copper exposed, his suspicions were confirmed. While they did route a trace from the chip to the via that would take the 5 V output the other side of the board, it wasn’t actually connected.

This is a pretty blatant bug to get left in the board, but to be fair, something similar has happened at least once or twice to pretty much everyone who’s ever designed their own PCB. Then again, those people didn’t leave said flaw in a commercially released module…

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