Wednesday of Fail for January 11, 2023
In case it wasn’t evident, I don’t sell product that I’ve received or reviewed generally (two exceptions for things that took up way too much space after a year or so.) While not everything stays in my house or office, pretty much everything reviewed can get a follow up if and when it fails. Here are some of the more interesting fails of the week.
Eufy SoloCam E40
I’ve written about the hill project before. These are the cameras that have been working there. One batch out of four went bad and we RMAd the last of the three pack purchased from Costco. Two of them went straight up completely dead to the point they don’t charge, and one occasionally charges and then claims it’s overheating.
As they’re from the same pack I highly suspect a bad run of batteries. Eufy extended the warranty a bit as it’s past a year since purchase (Costco would have as well,) and so far so good on the other nine cameras. These last two probably failed within a year, but it takes a while for me to get out to the hill to retrieve and diagnose on my side.
Two of the three cameras that bit it were mounted in what I would consider ideal scenarios (sheltered,) and one was not. The one that was not was the last to die.
Yeedi Vac Max / Vac Station
Blew out a gear it sounds like. Any pressure against the main brush results in sounding like it’s killing itself. This was deployed August 2, 2021 at my fathers’ house, who returned it because it never would finish mapping and kept getting tangled. It sat unused for about four months and then was given a short run at my work and then to a coworker.
It is unusable at this point due to the noise and I’m assuming not really turning the brush. I’d say at this point with the downtime it’s nearing a year of use.
Kasa TP-Link smart switch (although not entirely its fault)
These are my favorite brand of switches and this fail is not caused by normal use. I’m just including because this happened. Last night about 11pm while filling up a CPAP tank with distilled water some spilled. I heard it fall onto the carpet and I checked around and a small wet spot on the carpet a couple of inches away from the switches was all that I noticed.
I missed that there was some water on the switch. At 4am I am woken up because my CPAP stopped providing air. Let me tell you how fun it is to be choked awake. I looked, everything was on, figured I’d just kinked the hose or something until it went off again a few minutes later. Everything on the switch was turning on and off at once. Pressing the power button did nothing. I ended up pulling the strip out because 1) 4am me didn’t want to rewire things, 2) 4am me didn’t trust the thing one bit and it was somewhat warm in the middle.
When I got up I took the outlet strip down to a non-flammable area and plugged it back in. It’d lost all settings but appears to be functioning. I’m hesitant to put it back into operation anywhere until it sits and works fine for a few weeks where it can’t hurt anything. Going to contact support and see what they think.
Not the product’s fault, but does worry me a bit that a short didn’t just shut the entire plug down.
Anker NEBULA Cosmos Laser 4K Projector
This is a software fail, as such correctable. Today I booted the projector up. I should have suspected something was up because it hasn’t turned itself on randomly for a couple of days. Half the apps claim they don’t have internet. Plex, Amazon Video, Netflix failed.
I went to the Play Store, updated and downloaded some apps with no problem. Verified there was connectivity with a couple of apps. Rebooted the thing. More notice of connectivity issues while still having no issues with play store… Netflix now worked fine. Everything started working after I dismissed a notice that there was a new look and it wanted to sync from Android TV to Android TV… guessing an update happened / was happening.
No clue.
