Surprised that a $40 thermal camera attachment found a real short

I always figured those phone thermal cameras were a gimmick, but after chasing a weird intermittent shutdown on a laptop for days, I strapped one on and saw the charging IC glowing instantly. The port near the hinge looked fine to the eye, but the heat map didn't lie. Has anyone else had cheap diagnostic tools actually save a repair?

1 comments

1 Comment

emma_garcia29d ago

cheap diagnostic tools actually save a repair" is doing a lot of heavy lifting there. I get that yours worked, and that's cool, but I've seen those phone cameras send people down the wrong path just as often. Had a buddy spend an hour chasing a hot capacitor that turned out to be fine, the real issue was a cracked solder joint that didn't heat up much at all. The camera shows you where heat is, not what's causing it. For simple shorts, sure, maybe. But for intermittent stuff like you had, I'd still trust a multimeter and a logic analyzer over a picture any day. That $40 tool got lucky once, doesn't make it a real diagnostic tool.