This episode of Dull Men is brought to you by The 1990’s. The 1990’s: They Sucked, But You Probably Miss Them Anyway!™

My house is full of ceiling fans, all but one of which have a janky, decades old battery operated remote control associated with them. The one in the kitchen dies all the time, it takes a single AA battery, no real problem. Last night, at like, 2 in the morning, I wanted to turn the one in the living room on. The remote is dead. Okay, lemme go get a AA…the battery door is oddly small.

I pop it open, there’s a battery as big around as a AAA but half the length. Ah shit it’s an N cell. What braniac looked at a AAA and went “still too huge.” Dammit. Are N cells 1.5 or 3 volts? I don’t have one but maybe I can rig up one or two AAs…A23? 12 volts? What in the, why does a remote control need automotive voltage?

Okay, The Past, you may be infinitely large, and full of infinite incompetence, but jokes on you: I’m from The Past. I’ll see your bullshit, and raise you shenanigans.

I got out my tacklebox. From my tacklebox I got out my breadboard power supply and some jumper wires. I found a 20V DC wall wart in my bin O’ wall warts with a center positive barrel jack on it. I used my multimeter to regulate it down to 12.5V, figure it’s an open circuit, I jammed the pins of the jumper wires into the springs in the remote, and turned on my ceiling fan.

Now that the remote receiver in the fan is “on” the pull chain on the fan works.

    • Captain Aggravated@sh.itjust.worksOPEnglish
      1·
      1 day ago

      I really hate remotes that are in series with the onboard manual controls. If the pull chains on the fans worked the same logic as the remote, it wouldn’t be a problem.

      • snrkl@lemmus.orgEnglish
        1·
        12 hours ago

        I fly high powered rockets, and the flight computers run on lipos with a backup high quality 9v battery (good quality means the sub cells are soldered and not just stacked, so they don’t separate & disconnect power under Gforce loads causing a reboot of the flight computers mid flight)

        As you never want a questionable 9V backup battery, we have a simple rule: new battery, voltage tested, then only ever used once for flight… You don’t risk a $3k of airframe and flight controllers etc to save $3 on a battery…

        Why do I tell you this? I have a drawer full of 9V batteries with “NOT FOR FLIGHT” stickers on them that are good as new for use around the house.

        Now that my smoke alarms are mains connected with a lipo backup battery designed to last 10years, I have the opposite problem:

        “Who has use cases for 9v batteries around the house?!”

  • GroundedGator@lemmy.world
    1·
    1 day ago

    Our house came with a bunch of those. I used to enjoy them, but where I live and likely being a bit older, I tend to turn the fan on and leave it.

    I’m slowly replacing the ones we have. A few of the fans needed replaced for other reasons. The receivers don’t seem to handle power flickers well, so I’ve pulled a few busted ones out.