Chat with a 19 year old intern changed how I do hardware diagnostics

I had a summer intern named Marcus who's 19 and grew up on YouTube repair videos. He showed me how he uses a thermal camera on his phone to spot failing capacitors before pulling out a multimeter. Took me 15 years of doing it the slow way to realize I could speed up my troubleshooting by minutes. We tested it on three dead motherboards last Tuesday and he was right about two of them just from the heat pattern. Now I'm watching his workflow and picking up little things like using a USB microscope for cracked solder joints. Has anyone else had a younger tech teach them something that made you feel silly for not trying it sooner?

2 comments

2 Comments

wright.leo6d ago

Flip through any repair channel on YouTube and you will see the same tricks Marcus is using. Thermal cams on phones are cheap now and catch hot spots way faster than probing around with a meter. Makes you wonder how many hours you wasted on methods that are just outdated.

brooke_jones6d ago

The part about wasting hours on outdated methods hits pretty close. I read somewhere that thermal cameras have been in cell phones since around the 2017 models, so guys like Marcus have had access to this stuff their whole adult lives. Meanwhile I was still poking around with a meter on a dead power supply last month like a caveman. Makes me wonder what other obvious shortcuts I am walking past every day.