Amateur Engineer Figures Out Why His Kindle Randomly Restarts

[Greg Tito]

Amateur Engineer Figures Out Why His Kindle Randomly Restarts

Amazon is offering a refund for its leather Kindle case without claiming responsibility, but an enterprising engineer has figured out why his Kindle crashes.

It doesn't seem to make sense that a leather case could cause an electronic device to malfunction. The strange thing is that the official case for the latest version of the Amazon's Kindle ebook reader with a light attached to it doesn't cause any problems for users. But many people Connectify [http://www.amazon.com/Kindle-Leather-Display-Latest-Generation/dp/B003DZ163E/ref=pd_cp_e_3], was able to figure out that the problem lay in the metal hooks that hold onto the Kindle device.

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Most people, myself included, would just toss away a device that isn't working properly. But not Gizis. "It didn't seem to make a lot of sense that a leather cover would crash an electronic device, so I got curious and started to look closely at my Kindle's case," he wrote on his Connectify blog [http://connectify.blogspot.com/2010/12/why-leather-cover-crashes-kindle-3.html].

The lit case which retails for $59.99 [http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B003DZ165W/ref=s9_al_bw_ir01?pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=center-4&pf_rd_r=1XPR680ZVKTPR322DZ8H&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=1283687462&pf_rd_i=133141011] uses gold hooks which supply power to the light bulb so that you can read on the go. Gizis figured out that the non-lit case uses two black painted hooks to attach the Kindle to the leather case. At first, these hooks conduct no electricity because the paint blocks it but as the case sees more wear and tear, the paint starts to chip off. And because this is where the light would get its electricity from, Gizis made the leap in logic that maybe it's siphoning off power from the device, causing all of the power downs and headaches.

"So out came the handy-dandy Radio Shack multimeter, set to measure resistance," said Gizis. "Depending on your contact you can see some pretty low values, which imply a pretty good connection between the two. This is why the Kindle crashes. Once a bit of paint has rubbed off the hooks, power starts flowing through the cover, leading to brownouts; the CPU does not get enough juice to operate properly and ends out either hung or rebooting!"

Source: Connectify [http://connectify.blogspot.com/2010/12/why-leather-cover-crashes-kindle-3.html]

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[Something Amyss]

Oh God, that's golden. No pun intended.

 

[The Rogue Wolf]

Smart guy! Maybe he should consider starting an investigative website looking into why products really fail with no apparent reason?

[small]On second thought, he'd probably get sued; companies hate it when you tell people how much they suck. Maybe he'd better stick with the Connectify gig.[/small]

 

[mrwoo6]

My dad does this all the time.

He used the same devise to find out why his hover broke. he took the whole damn think apart spent half an hour messing around with it and then just sniped of a bit of wire and saved himself a lot of cash.

 

[Luke5515]

Thank god there's still some do it yourselfers out there. I love when something doesn't work opening it up and poking around. Granted I never do much good doing this, it's always interesting to take a peak.

 

[thiosk]

Pro tip:

Wet'n'wild clear coat nail polish. Two dabs on each hook.

Best liquid insulation application ever.

We routinely use it for insulating atomically sharp scanning probe tips.

 

[Uber Waddles]

Smart guy! Maybe he should consider starting an investigative website looking into why products really fail with no apparent reason?

[small]On second thought, he'd probably get sued; companies hate it when you tell people how much they suck. Maybe he'd better stick with the Connectify gig.[/small]

They would see a lot of libel suits, I assume. If one thing ended up wrong, it would be a cluster fuck, I would think.

I would love if they could do a thing like that, itd be epic

 

[Baresark]

Seems stupid that no one figured this out earlier. I'm not saying anything bad, mad phat props to him. I've worked a bit with electricity and it's pretty common knowledge that if electrical tape comes off of a hot wire, then electricity is free to move as it wants. It's stupid they thought just painting them over would be a permanent fix.

Anyway, I'm glad that got solved, not that it's going to entire me to buy one, I like my books made of paper, the weight of a book, the smell. All part of the experience.

 

[Kermi]

Smart guy! Maybe he should consider starting an investigative website looking into why products really fail with no apparent reason?

[small]On second thought, he'd probably get sued; companies hate it when you tell people how much they suck. Maybe he'd better stick with the Connectify gig.[/small]

They would see a lot of libel suits, I assume. If one thing ended up wrong, it would be a cluster fuck, I would think.

I would love if they could do a thing like that, itd be epic

It's only libel if it's not true.

 

[thenumberthirteen]

Guess who just bought a Kindle and Case for Christmas? Looks like I'm going to have to keep an eye out for wear and tear.

Pro tip:

Wet'n'wild clear coat nail polish. Two dabs on each hook.

Best liquid insulation application ever.

We routinely use it for insulating atomically sharp scanning probe tips.

Also the reason Darth Vader never used Force Lightning.

Also Wet'n'Wild sounds like either a Waterpark or a Porno

 

[Nerf Ninja]

Why would they even connect the hooks together if they are attached to a source of power? Isn't it obvious that would create a circuit?

 

[MasterSplinter]

It is a very unusual design decision to use battery charging ports for anything else that is not charging the god-damned thing.

 

[BabyRaptor]

I'll keep the Kindle App on my iPod, thanks. Cookies to the guy for figuring it out though.

 

[BehattedWanderer]

Pro tip:

Wet'n'wild clear coat nail polish. Two dabs on each hook.

Best liquid insulation application ever.

We routinely use it for insulating atomically sharp scanning probe tips.

I can second this. We use the stuff (or something quite similar) in controlling what gets detected on the samples in our electron microscopes. That which doesn't conduct doesn't get analyzed, so we can mount them safely in a polymer while analyzing the specimen correctly.

 

[Anarchemitis]

If it was that easy, somehow I get the impression that Amazon was employing software engineers to investigate the trouble, not electrical engineers. Big difference.

 

[SimuLord]

If it was that easy, somehow I get the impression that Amazon was employing software engineers to investigate the trouble, not electrical engineers. Big difference.

Tell that to the idiots in management. Because I'll tell you as a business student that the stereotype of managers as narrow-minded fuckwits is something they learn in college.

Or maybe it's because people who major in management tacitly admit that they're not smart enough to be accountants, engineers, artists, or other people who are actually fucking useful.

 

[Scrythe]

I used to work at a warehouse where on the the salesman loved doing this sort of thing to various defective gadgets from our stock. I remember when the perimeter security went out, he went out with one of those multimeters and tested every single segment of wire before he determined the issue and fixed it. Remember, he was just a salesman, not the tech guy who normally fixes these problems.

 

[theSovietConnection]

If it was that easy, somehow I get the impression that Amazon was employing software engineers to investigate the trouble, not electrical engineers. Big difference.

That's assuming engineers were even able to look at it to begin with. If Amazon's higher-ups were so convinced nothing was wrong with the cases, chances are the engineers were never told to look it over.