Category: Uncategorized

Repairing my iPad Screen

Tablet computer with broken glass screen on white background

Recently my iPad (5th gen) was dropped, and it had many cracks on its screen. After about a week of the glass being broken, I looked it up to see if I could order a replacement part to fix it and if it would be worth the price of a claim and the time to replace it. After a bit of googling around, I found out that I could just replace the glass part (the digitizer), and it would be much cheaper than replacing the whole LCD display.

A digitizer is where the screen recognizes touch, and is the outer glass part you interact with the actual LCD was not damaged. I was able to find a replacement part on a site called iFixit. I heard about iFixit from a YouTuber I watch called Hugh Jeffreys. Hugh Jeffreys is an Australian tech enthusiast who repairs devices such as Phones, Tablets, iMacs, etc., and makes short videos on the process. He and several other youtube creators also use iFixit tools for taking apart phones.

iFixit sells parts to many different kinds of devices mainly I was able to find a screen digitizer for my exact iPad model pretty quickly on their site. They also have a pretty active community on almost any device for help on taking apart and fixing. The part I ordered cost me about $50, including the tools necessary for taking apart the iPad.

After the part arrived, I looked at the guide in the item description. Unfourtintly I broke the home button ribbon cable when taking the front display off of the iPad. It was a painful process of heating the iPad adhesive with the heating tool, then attempting to pry it open, and then heating it again. Fourtintly I was able to find a home button replacement on iFixit as well, but that meant that the Touch ID would no longer work due to apple’s “safety concerns.”

After I applied for a screen protector after the completed repair, I bought it off amazon for about $8 for three. The entire repair cost about $70. It would have been cheaper if I hadn’t bought the home button replacement.

February 21, 2022
Shipstation Connect on Linux (workaround)

For a while now, my mother has owned an online business, and she uses a service called ship station. Shipstation allows an easy way to ship orders. The way we have it set up is a Dymo scale and a Rollo label printer hooked up to a computer that has Shipstation’s software called shipstation connect. Unfortunately, shipstation connect is currently only supported on Windows and Mac. That is a problem because I want to use my old laptop running Linux Mint.

After googling a lot to see if anyone could get it running on Linux and not finding anything, I. looked into using a virtual machine. A virtual machine is basically a computer OS (operating system) that runs inside your native OS or a “virtual computer” that runs inside another computer. I was able to download a software called virtual box by Oracle. The setup was surprisingly easy; all I had to do was download Windows off of Microsoft and create a new VM. After installing windows onto my VM, I downloaded shipstation connect from their website and drivers for the Rollo printer that I was using. After that, I saved a snapshot (a snapshot is basically a save that I can go back to later.) After I exited the program and had to look up how to get my USB devices connected as I didn’t see them show up when in windows, and after some googling, I found out I had to manually add them in the virtual machine settings on the virtual box.

Unfortunately, none of my devices would show. Even after installing the extension pack provided by oracle for USB 2.0 and USB 3.0, it would still show the message <no devices connected> I double-checked that my laptop was detecting the Rollo printer and the Dymo scale by using the lsusb command in the terminal, both devices showed up as connected and functional. So I went back to google, and I found out by this helpful forum answer that I needed to let virtual box see connected devices. After doing a simple command in the terminal, I restarted the laptop, and the virtual box program showed all of the connected devices. Once I got that working, I added the devices I wanted, the Rollo printer and the Dymo scale. And I started the windows machine once again from the saved snapshot. Once windows fully initiated in the VM. I ran the ship station connect program and hooked up the scale and printer. Then I went to my main screen on Linux and opened a browser tab, and tested the scale and printer. They both worked flawlessly and without delay!

Summary:

I was able to run a Virtual machine on a program called a virtual box. And used windows on it. Once I got windows working, I installed ship station connect and basically used the virtual machine of windows as a “local server” to use the scale and print on other devices or use my regular browser on the same device as my virtual machine.

February 7, 2022
Learning Javascript Basics

Recently I found a YouTuber by the name of “Bro Code” who has published many short coding tutorials on his channel, but the ones that caught my attention was his pretty long videos teaching the basics of different coding languages including HTM (Yes I know HTML isn’t a programming language,) C, and Java. The main one that I have been wanting to learn especially is Javascript since I had already learned some CSS and HTML basics from Codecademy.

Most of his tutorials are about four to twelve hours long, but he has everything timestamped for each subject. So far I am about one hour into his Javascript crash course video and am really enjoying it. His explanations are really useful for beginners. I would definitely recommend watching the courses for beginners:

February 3, 2022
Silencing my 3D printer and Installing BL-Touch

Recently I found out that I can upgrade my 3D printer (an Ender-3) so that I won’t have to hear that annoying beeping during printing. This is especially a problem for me because I have the printer right outside my bedroom door, and it can get really annoying and loud during the day and night. I had to stop printing overnight.

But I found out about a new motherboard replacement which apparently almost wholly silences the printer. For only $50, I thought anything would make it better. At the same time, I also purchased a BLtouch for $43, which is basically a probe that tests how far away from the bed the nozzle is, so I don’t need to level the bed every time before a print.

For installing the new mainboard (or motherboard), I had to remove a case covering, and it was mostly easy except for my board had the cords hot-glued into the slots, it was tedious and slow. It took me about two hours to completely install everything. I had forgotten to take a picture before unplugging the power supply cables, which I just looked up on Reddit pretty quickly. If you run into the same problem as I here’s an image for wiring the power cables:

For installing BL-Touch unplug and remove the z-stop cable and plug in the bl touch as shown in this image:

Dont forget to remove the physical switch on the board as in this image:

And for adjusting bl touch to work, this video was super handy for information:

Once the installation was done. I would definitely recommend this upgrade its extremely quiet, and the only thing you will hear when printing is the fans running! If you don’t mind the hassle, I would recommend buying this one from Amazon: (amazon link)

January 19, 2022