General > General Technical Chat
Right To Repair For Non-Technical People.
Fixed_Until_Broken:
--- Quote from: MrMobodies on July 18, 2021, 08:36:52 pm ---I think it was £60 direct excluding delivery and vat for this hose and I just used hose as it was for a year.
I was furious at the time not giving in to that and I did try other fittings and yes they were smaller or didn't screw in properly.
--- End quote ---
if the fitting is brass or metal you can braze them together.
I actually own a few mobile homes as rental properties. They do stuff like this with them. I think the reason mobile home manufacturers build them with weird parts that you cant go to the hardware stores is not to keep you locked in the ecosystem though. They just do it to either save a few cents on each part or to save on weight since they have to truck these things.
An example of one I am always having trouble with is the interior doors on them. Obviously getting off-topic of the right to repair with my example but yes custom parts/ fittings in a home applications can be really annoying.
Zero999:
Soldering is more common for plumbing, than brazing.
Plastic pipes can be joined with cyanoacrylate, or epoxy resin. I often use both. I apply the cyanoacrylate to make the initial bond, then add a load of epoxy on top, to make a good seal.
Check the adhesive/solder is suitable for plumbing and complies with the relevent hygene/safety regulations, especially if it's for drinking water.
NiHaoMike:
--- Quote from: Fixed_Until_Broken on July 18, 2021, 05:42:17 pm ---Richnormand: Copyright law is a huge issue in repair. GM has a product that the microcontroller fails in all the time. GM did not lock down the microcontroller on it. I physically can jtag in, dump it and then flash it on a new blank microcontroller. Legally it is questionable if I can even do that. I know for sure I can not give that dump to someone else so they can fix their device. Its crazy that IP makes that repair so hard even though all is what is happening is the broken chip is being replaced.
--- End quote ---
No different from cloning a PC hard drive to another one in order to replace it. If you want to be safe, delete the image and destroy the old chip after verifying that the new one works.
Fixed_Until_Broken:
--- Quote from: NiHaoMike on July 19, 2021, 01:57:54 pm ---No different from cloning a PC hard drive to another one in order to replace it. If you want to be safe, delete the image and destroy the old chip after verifying that the new one works.
--- End quote ---
No, it's nothing like that. The old chip is dead so you aren't putting the same image back on it you are cloning off another board or using a saved copy. Also, there is no user data on this chip it's all 100% firmware. The EEprom has all the user data like mileage/hours. I can't readily find case law of anyone being prosecuted on this but DMCA is where it is protected. I had done a lot of research on this when I first started to do these back in 2017. After you said that there aren't any issues doing that it looked into it again. It does look like there might be some case law from 2018 that at least protects reading the firmware but it still looks like at best you are in grey area cloning the data on to the new chip.
Even if its not actually against the law its deep enough into the grey that a lawsuit would not get simply thrown out and an actual hearing is likely. I can not afford a lawsuit against GM.
SiliconWizard:
--- Quote from: Fixed_Until_Broken on July 18, 2021, 06:16:11 pm ---I think the problem you have is you can't say no potting because it has its place in high vibration environments and wet/humid. You cant say only use Philips head screws because Torx and others have advantages. You cant ban glueing the screen together because it is superior image quality.
I do like where you are going but could you articulate the idea more for me? Maybe I am just missing what you are trying to say about designing the board/device to be repairable.
--- End quote ---
Well, as can be seen in the other thread as well, there are some misconceptions and misunderstandings... and in the end, IMHO, some misnaming as well, about the "right to repair" as it is currently defined.
Apparently, the right to repair as currently defined, and as currently advocated by its proponents, wouldn't force companies to design their products to be more repairable. If I get it right, it's mostly about providing enough documentation, access to firmware, etc (and the associated right to use them for repair purposes). But that poses unique liability and product conformity questions that I think are still unanswered. So the practicality of it all is still questionable.
In particular, and related to what you said, there's a fine line (contrary to what some seem to say) between not actively making a device repairable, and actively making it impossible to repair. It can be pretty subtle, and be certain that companies will take advantage of this subtlety without a second thought if that means lower cost and less effort in the end. If a company can justify using extremely specific parts and manufacturing processes for technical reasons (but then those hinder repairability), which is pretty easy these days with high tech gear, then you still wont be able to repair it, even if the company still gives you a service manual.
As to access to spare parts and firmware, I'm not quite sure about the right to repair in other parts of the world, but in the EU, if I'm not mistaken, that means a company should give access to spare parts for a given product for a minimum of 10 years (not for all classes of products, though). Which is better than nothing. But after 10 years, it's back to square one.
Don't get me wrong - contrary to what I've read in the other thread, I (and probably most people questioning it) am absolutely, completely and utterly NOT against the right to repair. On the contrary. I'm just questioning some points of its applicability, real benefits and the possible conformity questions that come with it. In other words, it's good, but not enough.
Note that it's not quite specific to the right to repair itself - which is still a step forward - and that some of those questions existed before without completely clear answers. So in particular, I think what is missing is a legal frame for repaired products. It's still pretty fuzzy IMHO. When you know FCC and CE requirements, for instance, it's not hard to understand what could differ between a product as made by the manufacturer, and a repaired product, especially if with non-original spare parts. But one may reply that this is not the "right to repair" concern. I wouldn't quite agree with this, but that would be a possible point. Just some thoughts though.
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