Right To Repair - Australia

[EEVblog]

There is now a right to repair petition in Australia!

https://actionnetwork.org/petitions/right-to-repair

[digsys]

I thought we won that fight years ago (my memory is not that clear). Not that it ever stopped me repairing anything anyway. Well, back into battle again I guess :-)

[EEVblog]

I thought we won that fight years ago (my memory is not that clear). Not that it ever stopped me repairing anything anyway. Well, back into battle again I guess :-)

I recall is being talked about before somewhere, but don't recall any actual legislation being passed?

[bdunham7]

We have various laws at the state and federal level here that mandate things like the availability of spare parts for a certain period of time (at a price), availability of service information as provided to authorized service centers (at a price) and relief from patent or other IP restrictions on repairs.

It has been of some help in some areas, such as automotive, but when it comes to consumer or professional electronics, the situation has definitely not improved.

"At a price" has come to be a key phrase.  Spare parts can be sold at any price and you might see a complex product with a parts list only 20 lines long.  1) Outer case assembly 2) Main board 3) Front board keypad and screen assembly 4) Power Cord and then 15 lines of screws and hardware listed as "obtain locally".  Service information, likewise, need not be free and if they don't provide it to service centers, they don't have to provide it to you.  The entire service manual might read "If you see a problem, first try replacing the main board and if that doesn't work, replace the front board assembly.  The end."

I had an OEM admit to me that for one line (their better handheld meters) that their warranty and service procedure was to replace the unit, either free under warranty or for the 'flat fee service' price.  If you send it to be calibrated, it gets tested and if it is out of cal, it's a new one for you!  Another OEM had to make a deal with me (a free upgrade of sorts) because their music streamer that was still under warranty couldn't be fixed--the OLED display was NLA.

So, best of luck with the legal 'right to repair',  but I think the last issue, the IP barrier, is the most important and that is simply because I think the future of repair will be almost entirely hacking--performing 'unofficial' or 'unauthorized' repairs.  Manufacturers will fight very hard to prevent this, and where their product is dependent in any way on continual support via the internet or other service, they will be tough to beat.  Here in the US companies like Apple, Tesla and John Deere are intentionally wiping out both their old products and any way of repairing them. 

[WillTurner]

Having to fight for the right to service equipment is absurd. I have been considering buying a high end DMM. The cost means nothing to me, but I look at the sophistication of these closed devices (running an operating system, GUI interface, internal programming languages etc) and it makes me think twice.
  The older generation of equipment (for example HP)  was supported with service manuals containing calibration procedures, description of operation, circuit diagrams, and board overlays. Even for that legacy equipment there is only a limited ability to support the hardware (replace all the caps!) because the software was closed. It would be a herculean effort to reverse engineer the software, let alone the hardware with precision components that were purpose manufactured for the device.
  I understand the reasoning for having the intellectual property for a device entirely closed. But I question whether it actually works. There are examples of equipment being copied so well that it is indistinguishable from the original (GPIB interfaces for example). There is high end equipment that doesn't bother to steal the hardware, it just copies the look and feel of the user interface. Furthermore, nations engage in espionage to steal design information.
  The one ray of hope I see in all of this might be open source. I'd like to think that there is enough money to be made in cheaply manufactured hardware, that the software can be opened. I suspect that this might make sense only at the top (nation) or bottom (hobbyist) manufacturing levels. Still thinking that one over. I just read a thread comparing oscilloscopes where it was said that one manufacturers offering had the advantage of being easily hackable. Why make us hack? If the software was open, the support costs could be lower because the user community would take on the support. And I'd still pay for a better quality implementation of the hardware.
  At the hobbyist level, on the other hand, I have been toying with another idea. I release a hardware design with full disclosure of circuit diagrams, board layouts, components and whatever else I have time to document. I write my own code, describe how it functions, and demonstrate that the hardware works to specification. But I don't provide software. What happens then? The hardware might be cloned cheaply, and maybe better than my implementation, and I could buy it. Some enterprising souls provide their interpretations of the code, and competition ensues to provide the best performance from the platform. It might lead to open source software, and an open hardware implementation? (That hundred page LCR meter thread comes to mind).
  Closed hardware and software doesn't impress me, and in the end I personally question every  decision to buy something complicated. Often, it comes down to whether I will buy it at all. (The best things I have are the ones that I don't have at all  ).

(edit :- grammar)

[madires]

Some enterprising souls provide their interpretations of the code, and competition ensues to provide the best performance from the platform. It might lead to open source software, and an open hardware implementation? (That hundred page LCR meter thread comes to mind).

In the case of the Transistortester it started with OSHW. After a while some Chinese businesses began to produce and sell clones, first with the OSHW firmware and later with modified versions. Unfortunately they don't release their modifications despite being based on open source. Some clones have a poor pin assignment, preventing the use of hardware SPI to drive a graphics display for example. One clone family has an additional management MCU which makes them incompatible with the OSHW design and firmware, but we have two work-arounds to fix that. Besides the Chinese businesses there are a few other companies producing copies of the Transistortester. IIRC, before the Transistortester there was a commercial product with less features and some PIC based variant in an electronics magazine.

BTW, next year some kind of right-to-repair law comes into action in the EU. It's mainly about large home appliances and TVs, repairability and spare parts. But they forgot the DIYers, spare parts only for repair shops. Luckily some repair businesses run online shops selling parts.

[Keith956]

Some manufacturers don't want you to repair their products. Recently the fan/motor on my Zanussi fridge/freezer stopped working. While waiting for it to defrost I looked up the cost of a replacement fan - a small flimsy bit of plastic, but they wanted no less than £33 for one! I can see no justification for charging that much.

And then there's Apple. Don't get me started on them...

[rstofer]

Some manufacturers don't want you to repair their products. Recently the fan/motor on my Zanussi fridge/freezer stopped working. While waiting for it to defrost I looked up the cost of a replacement fan - a small flimsy bit of plastic, but they wanted no less than £33 for one! I can see no justification for charging that much.

And then there's Apple. Don't get me started on them...

In terms of the fan, they have to source the fan, inventory some unknown quantity and handle selling a low $ item.  It's a money loser all the way around.  What do they source if the OEM no longer makes the fan?  How long should they have to maintain inventory on an obsolete unobtainable fan?  There's some cost for the sheer volume of storage.

The aircraft business has actual laws on how long parts need to be inventoried and it's a LONG time.  But airplanes cost a lot of money.

Some states tax inventory and that just compounds the losses.