Never say No to SWMBO. Fixed her toy drone.

[Housedad]

Among other things, I bought my wife a inexpensive drone for her birthday as she had expressed interest in trying it out.
That was November of last year.

the other day, she decided to finally do it.  She read the instructions. charged it up, linked the controller, and off she went for 15 minutes of fun.
Tonight, her elderly Dad came over for dinner and she wanted to show him this newfangled contraption.  Naturally, the controller failed to power up.  She turns and hands it to me and tells me to fix it before her father leaves.   I did not say No.   Yes, dear is the operative response. 

Two hours later, 2 bad SMD resistors, 19 cold solder joints, a cleaned on/off switch that was obviously a recycled component, a broken bodge wire resoldered, and jumped a cracked PCB It works. 

Dad got to see it fly. 

I cannot believe how horrible the solder job was on that board, and half of it was SMD.    I also put a layer of epoxy across the board in one non critical area on the PCB that had a crack in it to hold it together.   

For $79, this thing was a bit of a rip off. 

Sharper image DRO-004 Drone. 

Sorry I had no time to make pics.  This is just a rant on crappy consumer electronics.  After opening it, the only reason it did not hit the trash because it was so bad was my wife wanted to show her dad so much.

I know.  I'm a sucker.

[rsjsouza]

I am sorry to hear one more example of the sorry state of the toy/consumer industry.

IMHO you are not a sucker - you were fooled by con men and their inescrupulous ways.

Regarding SWMBO, it's the way of marriage - you do some nice things to her, she does some nice things to you. As long as there's balance and an open channel to talk, you should be ok for the most part.

[Housedad]

Even so, I do feel like  I'm a sucker for buying the lousy thing in the first place.  I guess I should have paid more and gotten worse.  It Was $79 on sale from $99.  It is a sad state of affairs in toyland.

My wife is the best thing that Ever happened to me these last 35 years together.

[drussell]

Sharper image DRO-004 Drone.

I think ^^ that, right there, is part of your problem.

Isn't that the same outfit that sold Trump brand Steaks?   

It seems they are the kind of enterprise that exists solely to blatantly sell the most obviously cheapest, crappiest product they can find at the highest price they can actually somehow manage to sucker their "customers" into paying. 

(I realize, sadly, that many companies these days do essentially the same thing but it is not often quite this flagrantly extreme and conspicuous.  Selling something so cheaply made that it has a reused power switch at a "discounted" $79 price point is awfully brazen crap-sellery.)

I'm sorry you ended up getting tricked into buying junk but at least you made it work!  Most people would be completely SOL.