right to repair

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Hackaday Links: December 14, 2025

December 14, 2025 by 7 Comments

Fix stuff, earn big awards? Maybe, if this idea for repair bounties takes off. The group is dubbed the FULU Foundation, for “Freedom from Unethical Limitations on Users,” and was co-founded by right-to-repair activist Kevin O’Reilly and perennial Big Tech thorn-in-the-side Louis Rossman. The operating model works a bit like the bug bounty system, but in reverse: FULU posts cash bounties on consumer-hostile products, like refrigerators that DRM their water filters or bricked thermostats. The bounty starts at $10,000, but can increase based on donations from the public. FULU will match those donations up to $10,000, potentially making a very rich pot for the person or team that fixes the problem.

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A baby blue hatchback with red accents drives down a road with blurry trees and a blue sky in the background.

Hyundai Paywalls Brake Pad Changes

November 15, 2025 by 93 Comments

Changing the pads on your car’s brakes is a pretty straightforward and inexpensive process on most vehicles. However, many modern vehicles having electronic parking brakes giving manufacturers a new avenue to paywall simple DIY repairs.

Most EVs will rarely, if ever, need to replace their mechanical brake pads as in most driving situations the car will be predominantly relying on regenerative braking to slow down. A hot hatch like the Ioniq 5N, however, might go through brakes a lot faster if it spends a lot of time at the track, which is what happened with Reddit user [SoultronicPear].

Much to their chagrin, despite buying the required $60/wk subscription to the National Automotive Service Task Force (NASTF) and the $2,000 interface tool, [SoultronicPear]’s account was suspended because it was not intended for use for anyone but “service professionals.” Not exactly a Right-to-Repair friendly move on Hyundai’s part. After trying a number of different third party tools, they finally found a Harbor Freight T7 bidirectional scan tool was able to issue the parking brake retract command to perform the pad swap, albeit not without throwing some error codes in the process.

Electrification of vehicles should simplify repairs, but manufacturers are using it to do the opposite. Perhaps they should read our Minimal Motoring Manifesto? There is a glimmer of hope in the promises of Slate and Telo, but we’ll have to see if they make it to production first.

EU Ecodesign For Smartphones Including Right To Repair Now In Effect

June 21, 2025 by 87 Comments

Starting June 20th, any cordless phone, smartphone, or feature phone, as well as tablets (7 – 17.4″ screens) have to meet Ecodesign requirements. In addition there is now mandatory registration with the European Product Registry for Energy Labelling (EPREL). The only exception are phones and tablets with a flexible (rollable) main display, and tablets that do not use a mobile OS, i.e. not Android, iPadOS, etc. These requirements include resistance to drops, scratches and water, as well as batteries that last at least 800 cycles.

What is perhaps most exciting are the requirements that operating system updates must be made available for at least five years from when the product is last on the market, along with spare parts being made available within 5-10 working days for seven years after the product stops being sold. The only big niggle here is that this access only applies to ‘professional repairers’, but at least this should provide independent repair shops with full access to parts and any software tools required.

On the ENERGY label that is generated with the registration, customers can see the rating for each category, including energy efficiency, battery endurance, repairability and IP (water/dust ingress) rating, making comparing devices much easier than before. All of this comes before smartphones and many other devices sold in the EU will have to feature easily removable batteries by 2027, something which may make manufacturers unhappy, but should be a boon to us consumers and tinkerers.

Texas’ Right To Repair Bill Is A Signature Away From Becoming Law

June 9, 2025 by 20 Comments

In what could be a big step forward for consumer rights, the Texas Senate recently unanimously voted to pass HB 2963, which references the “Diagnosis, maintenance, and repair of certain digital electronic equipment”. If signed by the governor, this would make Texas the ninth US state to enact such a law, and the seventh pertaining to consumer electronics. Interestingly, this bill saw anti-parts pairing language added, which is something that got stripped from the Oregon bill.

Much like other Right to Repair bills, HB 2963 would require manufacturers to make spare parts, documentation and repair tools available to both consumers and independent repair shops. If signed, the act would take effect in September of 2026. Included in the bill are provisions to prevent overcharging for the provided parts and documentation.

As for how useful this is going to be for consumers, [Louis Rossmann] had a read of the bill and gave his  typically eloquent thoughts. The tl;dw is that while there is a lot of stuff to like, this bill leaves open potentially massive loopholes (e.g. assemblies vs parts), while also carving out massive exemptions, which leaves owners of game consoles, boats, cars, tractors, home appliances, etc. stranded with no new options.

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Washington Consumers Gain Right To Repair For Cellphones And More

May 28, 2025 by 32 Comments

Starting January 1st, 2026, Washington state’s new Right to Repair law will come into effect. It requires manufacturers to make tools, parts and documentation available for diagnostics and repair of ‘digital electronics’, including cellphones, computers and similar appliances. The relevant House Bill 1483 was signed into law last week after years of fighting to make it a reality.

A similar bill in Oregon faced strong resistance from companies like Apple, despite backing another Right to Repair bill in California. In the case of the Washington bill, there were positive noises from the side of Google and Microsoft, proclaiming themselves and their products to be in full compliance with such consumer laws.

Of course, the devil is always in the details, with Apple in particular being a good example how to technically comply with the letter of the law, while throwing up many (financial) roadblocks for anyone interested in obtaining said tools and components. Apple’s penchant part pairing is also a significant problem when it comes to repairing devices, even if these days it’s somewhat less annoying than it used to be — assuming you’re running iOS 18 or better.

That said, we always applaud these shifts in the right direction, where devices can actually be maintained and repaired without too much fuss, rather than e.g. cellphones being just disposable items that get tossed out after two years or less.

Thanks to [Robert Piston] for the tip.

Have Li-ion Batteries Gone Too Far?

March 13, 2025 by 85 Comments

The proliferation of affordable lithium batteries has made modern life convenient in a way we could only imagine in the 80s when everything was powered by squadrons of AAs, or has it? [Ian Bogost] ponders whether sticking a lithium in every new device is really the best idea.

There’s no doubt, that for some applications, lithium-based chemistries are a critically-enabling technology. NiMH-based EVs of the 1990s suffered short range and slow recharge times which made them only useful as commuter cars, but is a flashlight really better with lithium than with a replaceable cell? When household electronics are treated as disposable, and Right to Repair is only a glimmer in the eye of some legislators, a worn-out cell in a rarely-used device might destine it to the trash bin, especially for the less technically inclined.

[Bogost] decries “the misconception that rechargeables are always better,” although we wonder why his article completely fails to mention the existence of rechargeable NiMH AAs and AAAs which are loads better than their forebears in the 90s. Perhaps even more relevantly, standardized pouch and cylindrical lithium cells are available like the venerable 18650 which we know many makers prefer due to their easy-to-obtain nature. Regardless, we can certainly agree with the author that easy to source and replace batteries are few and far between in many consumer electronics these days. Perhaps new EU regulations will help?

Once you’ve selected a battery for your project, don’t forget to manage it if it’s a Li-ion cell. With great power density, comes great responsibility.

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Hackaday Links: March 9, 2025

March 9, 2025 by 9 Comments

It’s been a busy week in space news, and very little of it was good. We’ll start with the one winner of the week, Firefly’s Blue Ghost Mission 1, which landed successfully on the Moon’s surface on March 2. The lander is part of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services program and carries ten scientific payloads, including a GPS/GNSS receiver that successfully tracked signals from Earth-orbiting satellites. All of the scientific payloads have completed their missions, which is good because the lander isn’t designed to withstand the long, cold lunar night only a few days away. The landing makes Firefly the first commercial outfit to successfully soft-land something on the Moon, and being the first at anything is always a big deal.

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