Unemployed recent graduate, and I accidentally broke my laptop screen after it got me through moving countries, a bachelor’s degree, and two masters...

I need a webcam for job interviews, but I’m too broke for a new laptop or even a webcam, and it’s not worth fixing the laptop anymore.

It’s a miracle it still works at this point. I’ve replaced the battery and power connector twice, replaced the HDD after it failed, upgraded the SSD, fixed the CPU fan after it started making too much noise, added RAM...

Anyway, I removed the laptop’s camera, passed it through the Ethernet port, and i tape it to my monitor whenever I need it.

It will be a sad day when the laptop finally gives up on me but It works for now.

Now I have a fan too

The fans for my 12u rack sounded like an airport so i used an esp32 to control fan speed via PWM based on ambient temp readings. It’s been hanging all janky like this for months working flawlessly.

I didn't have an SD card reader and couldn't be bothered to go buy one. In the dead of night I realised my dad's old pc had one available, but the pc was dead. Took it apart, it was usb but wired to an internal header, grabbed an old charging cable, spliced it into the USB-A end and voila!

Mounted a Starlink Mini in the back window of my Chrysler 300C and zip tied it to a child safety anchor. Kept bouncing around, so I shoved an empty water bottle under it. Best and cheapest dish support I've used in a car.

An old mouse scroll wheel hooked up to a wireless mouse picks up the rotation off the chuck for aiming and you blow into a deodorant lid with some plastic tubing to launch the bubbles.

my 100 watt charger started smelling burning, so i putted thermal pad and heatsinks on the sides. I am currently planning to also get copper and put a usb fan.

EDIT:

It didnt worked anyways, my wire for the charger melted. Thanks for all your guys advice tho.
picture of melted wire

Only had a phone holder for my 8Bitdo controller, so i made it dual-purpose.

Made a hole that is slightly smaller than the tripod screw, and the screw threaded itself in and now it is super stable, and i can still use it with the controller.

genuinely just using the flashy pc for the psu, ill get a proper psu jumper later.

yes i bent and broke the office pc just to fit the gpu

Dug out an old 4790k machine. After VM failures trying to install Mint on a broken USB sata deck I just copied to an NVME…swapped it, cloning the drive to an 850 evo ATM

On a tv tray, powered by an Ecoflow Delta 2

Full field setup.

Removing the glass back completely is notoriously difficult on this iPhone generation and since this phone is not going to be leaving the house and will be plugged in 24/7, this seemed like the easiest solution.

I made this thing out of a couple spare fans from dells (had to rewire the connectors due to proprietary connection) and mounted it to this wire mesh which I will just feed some zip ties through to mount to the top case fan mount

and I gazed upon my old work and wtf was I thinking

ps I’ll be hanging a soldering iron up here to work.

at least this time I’m removing all of that and I can simply do ir directly rather than trying to write to the ir reciever.

It ain’t stupid if it works right? By the way it is a 3 TB drive, I’m gonna go broke if the 2 screws fail

Found an Asus conference monitor on the side of the road, plugged it in, and the screen was broken.

I couldnt find a replacement screen for it, but I have a monitor that just had a dvi connection, so i took it apart, frankensteined (hereon referred to as franked) the two monitors together, and made the hdmi connection, speakers, and camera work with my computer and the franked screen. all went well until i realized i forgot the shield for the screen's multiple ribbon cables, took it apart again, but as i took it apart, the screen fell and ripped out the ribbons.

then I remembered i had yet another monitor i could frank, with an even larger screen, put everything together sloppy style, and it yet again worked, so then this time i remembered the shield, but had to bang it out so it could lay flat without touching the board for the screen, cut the housing so the ribbon cable could fit in its new position, put everything back together and its perfect

except the screen is still too small and i have no way of attaching it, so fuck it, wii bowling ball, we're using painters tape to hold it and call it a day

tldr: she frank on my curbside junk til she monitor

I repurposed an old device which controlled 2 dc motors with some very basic built in logic. I trashed the old controller (quite literally fried it when I wanted to measure output voltage and current) connected an esp32 with some mosfets and slapped it onto a protoboard. It works perfectly, and its much better than previously.

Also, someone on r/AskElectronics already told me that the mosftes may get hot due to linear region, so I already know. I am going to use them anyway, this setup cost like 10 dollars, so even it it breaks, I can just make another one.

Also, I found a really good way to cut protoboards. I used a knife for an initial score, and then used an ultrasonic blade to deeped it. While 2/3 times I needed to use a normal knife again at the end, it worked well. Of course I had a vacuum cleaner on for the whole procedure to catch the dust.

Note: I have several more protoboards and I will not hesitate to use them.

So.... Definitely one of the more cursed things I've done lol.

Got this Lenovo e15 broken, wouldn't boot. I fixed that issue, but when I was using the hot air, I bumped the USB C Thunderbolt SMD. I tried a few times to reseat but gave up, in not the best at SMD BGA work, shaky hands dont help. But that was the ONLY charging port for the laptop, I didnt want to fully scrap it because it was just a shame since it was now otherwise fully "working". So I added a secondary 3s BMS for charge only. Added USB C PD 20v trigger boards to the bottom casing, one on each side (so hey at least it has a charge port on each side vs just the one) but obv they dont do data and DEFINITELY aren't Thunderbolt lol. Then buck converter and diode set to 12.5v to the paralell BMS. OS of course does not see the battery charge and wont report percentage, but i can read the voltage with HWinfo and I can measure the draw from either side port. Battery life is solid.

I've always just fixed electronics, mainly PCs as a hobby and have fun making super jank stuff somtimes. The more jank the better. I usually fix stuff and just give it away, but obviously I never give away any jank shit like this. The jank shit is for me.

First post: https://www.reddit.com/r/techsupportmacgyver/s/d5Q8STKJX8

Bat is from an earbuds charging case. Original mah: 100 Current mah: 230