- Micro HDMI may very well be
the worst mainstream connector on the market.
It's super compact while still carrying
the same high quality video signals of its bigger,
more competent brother.
But it is the very definition of an Achilles heel.
This $4 part,
$4,
turned a $3,000 camera into a paperweight.
And the cost to have it repaired
by a Sony authorized service center,
500 freedom dollars.
That is why today I will be taking matters
into my own hands.
That is why right to repair matters.
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(upbeat electronic music)
- Let's begin with a bit more backstory.
When I was shooting the sponsored ultimate streaming
setup video for Elgato a little while ago,
I was struck by how much more comfortable
that setup was to use compared to my one at home.
And the reason for that is that at home,
I have to crank my key lights up
so bright that they're uncomfortable to look at
in order to get a clean image out of my cheap Canon camera.
Which got me thinking, I'm not about to downgrade
to a webcam, but if I want a DSLR
or a mirrorless that has outstanding low light performance
so I can turn those lights down,
what are my options?
Here's one.
How about the a7S II that we already own here at the studio
but we haven't been using because it's broken.
I mean, it's not completely broken.
I can turn it on and wait, were we expecting that to happen?
Did it magically start working?
This is inconvenient, but also I'm happy.
Ah.
Okay.
This is one of those situations where it's,
it's working enough that
it knows it's supposed to be working.
Now, just to demonstrate that it's not the cable.
What is this?
A S5?
Oh, yep.
There we go.
Confirmed. TV works.
Cable works.
Actually, this is a really important thing to bring up.
You guys might wonder why exactly the fact
that the Micro HDMI port on this camera
not working is even a problem for us here in the studio.
And the answer is that,
while the camera does have a built in display,
usually in a production environment,
you'd need a much larger one
in order to make sure that you're maintaining focus.
So we'd hook up something
like this external monitor from small HD.
That means that every hour this camera's in operation,
it's got something plugged into its Micro HDMI port
which eventually, and we're talking in a matter
of tens of hours or hundreds of hours,
not thousands of hours.
It is going to break.
50 bucks gets you high quality solder, flux, and wick.
With the necessary applicators,
you'll spend anywhere from 25
to 100 dollars, depending on how baller you wanna go
for some kind of precision screwdriver set.
You'll need another $100 in change
for a soldering iron and a hot air station
and 20 bucks for a mystery 21 ounce water bottle
from lttstore.com.
And even after buying all of that stuff,
you are still going to be out ahead
of what you would've spent on someone else doing it for you.
And now you own all these tools, which is pretty cool.
(Linus slurping)
Honestly, the biggest factor for me though,
was that I have nothing to lose.
If I break it, so what?
I was already gonna have to replace it anyway.
And the only thing I really had to buy
was $20 worth of Micro HDMI ports.
So, since this operation can clearly be done
we actually found a guide on how to do it online.
Though it omits the actual soldering,
because that's a service this person offers
and his name isn't Louis Rossmann.
I think we can put together the missing pieces here.
So this is where the scripted portion of this video ends.
And I start disassembling this camera.
Wish me luck everybody.
Got an exploded view of the camera right here.
And I talked to Callanan who actually used to do a fair bit
of this work at his old job.
And he says, we are gonna go in
from the bottom and the back.
So that is where we'll start.
(relaxing upbeat music)
Yeah, this should be fine.
Let's just see if it's loosened at all.
Whoa. Hi.
Yep. Look at that.
- [Brandon] Oh wow.
- [Linus] Yep. Plate came right off.
Wait.
And whoa.
Woo. Woo.
That was exciting moment.
Seems to be hampering me a little bit here.
I think I have to actually take the screen off
and disconnect the ribbon on this side.
Hold on. I got this though. I got this.
I'll get this all labeled in a sec.
Famous last words.
(pieces clicking)
Yep. There we go.
Look at that.
Is that a vapor chamber or is that just a copper spreader?
Oh, wow. That's interesting.
Look, they're carrying heat way up here.
Man, I'm stressed.
I get really warm when I work on stuff like this.
Like I don't wanna break it,
and I also don't wanna not get content out of it.
And I feel like if I break it, it's not really a video.
I can't get it out past the sticker.
I might just have to force it a little.
There we go.
Would y'all look at that.
Would you just look at that?
Wow. It's actually really easy to change out the card slot.
This is as far in as you have to go
and they've got it on its own daughterboard,
so boom, new SD card slot.
(fingers snapping)
Just like that.
'Cause that's something I could see failing a lot too.
Everything's under control.
Also, this copper shield is off now. More cooling.
We've got made by Micron.
Presumably this is DRAM.
We've got Sony's image processor.
Wow. This folded cable here is, looks pretty challenging.
(Brandon gasps)
No, no that's fine.
That's fine. It's fine.
It's just a sticker.
Calm down, Brandon.
- [Brandon] I'm calm.
- [Linus] You're stressing everybody out.
Chill.
(Linus and Brandon laughing)
Time to start popping out the dozen
or so ribbon cables all around this main board.
The good news is that the cable memory
should pretty much tell us where they all go back in.
Look at that.
Huh?
Easy peasy.
Easy.
More cooling.
More thermal pads.
Oh wow.
So I misidentified this.
I think that I had said this looked like the main processor
but I actually doubt that now.
And I had also said that maybe this was DRAM
but I doubt that now too,
because this pin pattern looks like DRAM
and it sits right under what looks like it might be
some kind of integrated package.
I don't know much about the architecture of a camera.
This is all just kind of me making things up as I go.
So take it for what it is.
And that's it.
That's the culprit right there.
(Linus tongue clicking)
Oh, wow.
It's mangled.
(Linus laughing)
No wonder it's broken.
- [Brandon] Yeah.
- The thing is, it's not just
like the resiliency of the pins inside.
You gotta understand.
There's a lot of strain on it from the weight
of the cable and there's just no real getting around that.
Okay. It's getting real now.
Oh God.
I did not label a thing.
We'll write PCB question mark.
I'm pretty sure it is.
Sanity check.
Let's make sure we're removing the right thing here.
We want this guy.
Cool. Right?
This feels like a lot of heat to be putting on this.
If we're having trouble getting it off
we can try adding a little bit of flux.
Not too much.
Not that it'll harm anything, but, come on baby.
One moment please.
(Linus screaming)
Starting to feel like this might have been a mistake
Go.
Actually, I think it's loosening.
I think I got it loose on the one side.
Come on, come on, come on, come on, come on, come on.
Hey, there we go.
Oh my God.
Now, we need our soldering iron and our wick.
I named him John.
So we're just gonna pick up all
of our extra solder with this bad boy.
I've got most of the through holes cleared now.
I think it's clean.
Here's the backside.
- [Nick] That's pretty good.
- [Linus] Looks pretty good.
We've got five tries at this.
I have five Micro HDMI connectors.
So here's the plan.
I'm gonna have to take this guy.
And I'm gonna put right there.
And all of those need to go exactly on all of those pads.
So we take this and we put some of the solder
kinda over these contact points here.
We kind of spread it around a little bit.
(machine ringing)
That is not good.
Let's just get rid of this again.
(Linus laughs)
You can see there's a giant ball of solder
across two pins in a couple of places here.
So I did put a little bit too much.
To grab the extra solder,
we're just gonna take our tip, which is clean,
and we're just gonna throw some flux on there
and we're gonna try and
kinda loosen that up and grab it.
So now, basically what?
We flow it and go for it?
Okay. Let's flux it up baby.
- [Nick] Lots of flux.
- Here we go.
Shine for me, baby.
♪ This little light of mine. ♪
♪ I'm gonna let it shine ♪
Once it's all silvery, we just go for it?
- [Nick] Yeah.
- Oh God. I blew it away.
Oh boy.
Okay. So we have a slight problem.
When I
put the heat on the Micro HDMI
it melts the plastic.
- [Brandon] Oh.
- So,
basically I need to heat it up
and then instantly,
absolutely nail the placement of this thing.
(machinery ringing)
Oh my God. Go on there. Hold still.
Sh-
(beeping)
Ah, we were close that time.
It's not that it's off,
it's that the plastic melted.
And it looked like the back pins were
on still, but it's hard to tell.
Okay. All right.
I give up for today.
- [Nick] All right.
- [Linus] Oh, that is a, that's a shame.
We're back ladies and gentlemen and we got solutions.
Kyle from engineering said, hey guys, you need a hot plate.
Well, we don't have a hot plate
and we don't have time to wait around for one.
So we've got a hot brick, 145 degrees Celsius,
ladies and gentlemen.
We baked that brick like the bosses we are.
Now it's time to take another run at this
without this giant ground plane here,
sucking up all the heat that we're trying to use
to desolder our shiss.
So we'll get our,
let's get our hot air station.
We're gonna try and pull this Micro HDMI
that we did manage to put on last time,
but didn't connect fully.
Oh, we're getting up near a hundred, a hundo.
Here we go.
Ow, Ooh.
That's a hot brick.
Yep.
There we go.
And
to-do-do
Okay. It's off again.
Oh, is it mangled?
You know what?
I think this might have actually survived Andy.
I think we can take another crack with this boy.
Do you believe?
- [Nick] I believed last time.
- Yeah. So I guess that's a pretty big shot
to your credibility right there.
(group laughing)
The only reason that
we're not putting flux on right now by the way,
is that there's already
like an ocean of flux on this thing.
(upbeat music)
Oh, I can't do this lefthanded.
I just need to be able to steady my hand.
Oh God,
stop.
It's so sticky.
So I have a slight problem.
A couple of the pins have bridged solder on them.
Yep. This one's a fail.
Well, this is our last crack at it.
(piece bumping)
Balls.
Oh God. I think this is it.
I think this is the moment.
I need the microscope to know if it's lined up.
It ain't aligned.
- [Nick] Oh.
- [Linus] See, if the goal was to have it perfectly
in between the pads, then hashtag nailed it.
Okay. I'm trying to pull this off as cleanly as I can here.
'Cause if I bend these pins
we're not gonna be able to put it back on.
I think I got it.
(Linus singing)
Should I go for gold and try the last connector?
Because I think part of the problem is
that this one's got some gunk on it.
It's making it hard to get it in place.
It is lined up.
I'm gonna go check under the microscope.
I got the sign off from Kyle.
He says that it doesn't appear as the, oh.
What is going on here?
Sh-
(beeping)
How did this happen?
One of these ribbons is busted.
Shoot.
That is not repairable, unfortunately.
Now the question becomes, do I need that?
Where does it go?
I was hoping to put it together just a little
to see if it fires back up.
And if we can test it before we completely close it up.
I'm so upset right now.
I actually cannot tell where this plugs into right now.
So why don't we just leave it for the time being,
see what happens.
Wow. This is an absolute nightmare to install.
I don't know how they build these things at the factory.
The issue is just that
there's no way to get my fingers in there
and apply any force to it whatsoever.
It's just, I'm just relying on the stiffness
of the ribbon to go, to push it in, but it's not enough.
Oh my God. Go.
(beeping)
Get the.
(beeping)
In there. I don't understand this.
God, my level of pissed off is so high right now.
So if I'm lucky, the functions that are not connected
will be ones that I don't need.
I would have to get extremely lucky for that though.
Like, we're talking horseshoes up my ass lucky.
I say, if we get a signal from the HDMI port,
we end the video there.
Even though the camera itself is not fixed.
'Cause that was the goal.
Definitely makes me feel better about how much cameras cost.
I did plug in what remains of the ribbons.
So, Ah.
It's entirely possible that it is still plugged in.
Okay. So no SD card reader
but everything else should fundamentally be connected.
(pieces clicking)
No life.
No smoke, no sparks, but no life.
So I need a new top housing among other things.
Okay. Well we have to call it here for now.
We'll have to resume
once we get some replacement parts ordered.
(sign clicking)
- [Callanan] We're gonna do this
and I'm gonna hate every moment.
- [Mark] Yep.
(funky music)
- [Callanan] There we go. Will it work?
Oh yeah.
Ta-da.
- [Mark] So satisfying.
- [Callanan] Oh, thank God.
Oh, I have to pull the whole thing out.
- [Mark] Yeah, that's what I thought.
- [Callanan] Oh,
- [Mark] Why do you need to pull that out though?
- [Callanan] Because it's connected to the main one.
No.
I have to take it apart even more.
- [Mark] Yeah.
(piece clicking)
- [Callanan] Hey, there we go.
Okay. So I think if we stop at this point, like filming,
I can figure out the soldering off camera.
- [Mark] Okay.
- [Callanan] Because honestly,
that's gonna be long and boring.
- [Announcer] A few moments later.
- [Callanan] Alright. Time to put this back together.
(funky music)
All right.
Before I fully close this out.
- [Mark] Yep.
But usually we get a,
oh yeah, it works.
- [Callanan] Everything flickered, which is good.
(beeping)
(tape rolling)
(old piano music)
(projector clicking)
- It is now sometime later.
And the saga is finally over.
As it turns out, the original board,
the one that I fixed, actually does work.
It just powers off intermittently,
which might be due to damage
from the heat of the soldering iron.
We learned a valuable lesson
about preheating your entire board
before going at it, which is great.
But unfortunately it did cost us a new board,
which was just under 400 U.S. dollars.
That was installed, courtesy of this guy.
- Hey.
- [Linus] Thanks.
And we were getting this really weird awful green output.
So, initially we thought, oh okay,
maybe we screwed up a cable or something like that.
But as it turns out, the potential need
for Sony software or calibration was a very real need.
So we ended up needing to send it to a Sony service center,
pay about $200 to get our sensor,
calibrated for this particular board,
or rather the board calibrated for this particular sensor.
And now it works absolutely perfectly.
In fact, you already saw me deploy it
in the video where I showed off my new gaming setup.
It's amazing.
Best webcam, like, ever.
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- If you guys enjoyed this video, you might enjoy the series
where we water cooled a RED 8K camera.
It was quite a bit more successful.