I brought a wet AirPod back from the dead last week using rice. It does work, sometimes.
It just plain doesn't work, please stop telling people to do this
Submitted 2 days ago by cm0002@lemmy.zip to memes@sopuli.xyz
https://lemmy.zip/pictrs/image/0e59235b-3862-4554-9921-f532224c9be2.webp
Comments
aeronmelon@lemmy.world 2 days ago
cm0002@lemmy.zip 2 days ago
It doesn’t, what you’ve got is either a device that was sufficiently waterproofed (Which maybe aren’t AirPods waterproof?)
Or a device that’s working on borrowed time, the minerals are still there being deposited on electronic components as the water evaporates on its own. It can take some shorting here and there, but it’s only a matter of time before it becomes too much. Could be a few days, couple of weeks or even months and then POOF dead
shalafi@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Uh, how mineral rich is your water?!
davetortoise@reddthat.com 22 hours ago
But it’s funny
certified_expert@lemmy.world 1 day ago
WD-40
that IS its reason of existance.
(full disclosure: I have never tried it. I don’t recommend trying it, just keep scrolling.)
Lightfire228@pawb.social 1 day ago
This makes me curious how effective that would actually be
It probably depends on the electrical conductivity of WD 40, and whether it corrodes
JamesBoeing737MAX@sopuli.xyz 1 day ago
It def. doesn’t corrode or it would also fuck with machinery.
certified_expert@lemmy.world 23 hours ago
iirc, WD literally stands for “water displacement”. 40 is because it was the 40th formula
shalafi@lemmy.world 1 day ago
You can make your own 90%+ isopropyl if 70% is all that’s available. The stronger stuff is better for many/most home cleaning and science projects.
Put your 70% in a jar, add a shitload of salt, give it a shake. Siphon the alcohol off the top. There’s a clear boundary layer so you can see what you’re doing.
Also, most desiccant beads are reusable. Notice the rare, colored bead mixed in there? Those are indicators of how wet the beads are. You can microwave a bowl and recharge them. I cut the tiny packs open and pour in them in a jar for later. Also, paper coffee filters are great for making your own, larger packs.
In any case, open your electronics and pull the battery ASAP. And no, don’t try to put it back together any time soon unless you chase the water out with alcohol. Let that shit sit a day or two. One time I pulled an old school monitor out of the rainy trash. Let it sit 48-hours, worked fine.
stevestevesteve@lemmy.world 1 day ago
90% is better for fast drying but for cleaning, 70% is often much better. People forget just how good a solvent water is, and there are plenty of things that dissolve in water but not alcohol (as you’ve noted, salt is one).
TheOakTree@lemmy.zip 15 hours ago
That 70% is most useful for actual cleaning, whereas 90% is likely better for removing any water through mixing and evaporation. Ultimately it depends on which liquid and much of it you got in your device.
Lyra_Lycan@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 days ago
I thought the whole purpose of the joke, the punchline, was that leaving your phone in rice would attract an Indian to the food, and compulsively fix the phone. That’s what I heard in school with that joke anyway
burntbacon@discuss.tchncs.de 2 days ago
Nah, this little bit of wisdom has been around since flip phones in the early 2000s era. That’s long before there were any businessmen cooking up various franchises based around variations of 'fix’ation.
db2@lemmy.world 2 days ago
So you thought the purpose was over racism and you’re ok with that.
hotdogcharmer@lemmy.zip 1 day ago
To be fair, they didn’t say they were okay with it 🤷♂️
AllHailTheSheep@sh.itjust.works 2 days ago
best way I’ve found to isolate and repair water damage is to open it up and apply some high quality liquid rosin to the water damaged areas. then hit it with hot air (300c should be fine) to get the rosin under all chips and connectors. lastly, do not clean the board, it can push the corrosion around and cause more issues.
Dubiousx99@lemmy.world 2 days ago
You are just trolling right?
AllHailTheSheep@sh.itjust.works 2 days ago
no. if you want to do component level board repair for water damge, this is how you do it professionally. I’ve been using this strategy for 5 years or so now and it has much better success rates than just cleaning the board with ipa.
maybe overkill for most people since it requires more specialized tools but if you go to a shop they’ll most likely use similar techniques at least to assess the damage
MotoAsh@piefed.social 2 days ago
Fun fact: that’s not how humidity works. It, in fact, DOES help to get water to evaporate by forcing the local humidity around the phone to stay low. Otherwise you may as well say all the people doing 3D printing that use desiccant to keep water out of their filaments is totally useless, too.
What it won’t do is magically erase any gunk or minerals that were in the water that can short out traces on unprotected PCB and chips even with the water gone.
sulfidedisburseangledafternoontipper@piefed.blahaj.zone 2 days ago
Sure, but rice is a shitty desiccant. If it weren’t, it would cook easier and we would ship things with packets of rice rather than silica gel.
MotoAsh@piefed.social 2 days ago
Silica gel is a great desiccant. Just because rice cannot match something basically designed for the task, doesn’t make it awful.
You might as well be saying, “but my horse cannot run fast! He’s always behind Secretariat!”
Ephera@lemmy.ml 2 days ago
It may not be an industrial-grade desiccant, but the major advantage of rice is that people tend to have it at home…
agent_nycto@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Rice is literally one of the easiest things to cook on the planet.
We probably don’t use rice for shipping because if it did get wet it would get moldy, unlike sciatica. Doesn’t mean it isn’t effective.
JusticeForPorygon@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 days ago
Good point. I’ll use diatomaceous earth next time.
cm0002@lemmy.zip 1 day ago
Dealing with humidity is one thing, but it’s terrible at drawing “whole” water out of something.
And it’s not the water that’s the problem, it’s like you said, it’s the gunk and minerals it leaves behind.
Isopropyl alcohol will push water out of any cracks and crevices, if you’re able to submerge bare boards in it. If you do it before the minerals have a chance to dry and corrode, it will get pushed out with the water.
faintwhenfree@lemmus.org 1 day ago
Again untrue whatever you think is “whole” water, any dessicant will absolutely 100% help with evaporation.
Not every person is tech savvy enough to open boards. Advice for most novices is still put phone between dessicant to get water out if the device is valid and good advice.
Would using isopropyl alcohol be better option? Sure it is. but telling my aunt to do it, and device will probably die because she doesn’t know how to handle pcbs anyway. I’d much rather just advice using dessicant and hope mineral residue doesn’t sort anything. And I’ll continue with that advice forever.