I made a quick gallery of my recent adventure taking apart two remotes which is shared below:
Sony Bravia TV Universal Remote
Onn 4K Plus Streaming Device Remote
Procedure: Both remotes had plastic tabs holding them together. I was able to pry them apart with a guitar pick (credit card would work too) and separate the body from the internal remote board. The Sony remote (Green circuit board) was kind enough to label the component as "MIC1" with the screen printing so I flipped it over and removed the black adhesive covering over the Mic hole. The Mic hole is very small and I did try a few things before settling for a #1 flathead screwdriver from my iFixIt kit. The irony of using that kit to destroy something is not lost on me here. Anyway, I placed the screwdriver into the empty Mic hole and applied firm even pressure and let the flathead dig into the board. I went slow and could tell I was making progress when the Mic component on the other side of the board lifted away. At that point I backed out the screwdriver and used tweezers to pull off the Mic. Then quick reassembly and testing and all functions were good!
For the Onn 4k Plus Streaming remote (Black circuit board) I was able to follow the same procedure above where I used the pick to open the remote, used the screwdriver to apply even pressure to screw into the Mic hole and lift the component from underneath until I could get tweezers under it. I did however encounter an issue where a copper trace lifted with the component. It was very thin and I peeled back only enough to get a razor blade under it and sever it from the board. Then re-assemble and tested with no issues. All in all, for me with experience taking electronics apart it was about 20 minutes of working. I have one more Onn remote and a Samsung remote with a solar charger on the back to do next.
To get ahead of the comments on why I didn't use a razor blade or heat gun to remove the mic: I tried a razor blade at first on the Sony remote but discovered that the component was soldered so close to the board that I would have to destroy the screenprint to get underneath it. Unfortunately I don't trust myself with a heat gun either since I didn't have Kapton tape to protect the other components.
If there is enough interest I can post the reassembled remotes for matching them or images of the Samsung remote surgery when I do it as well. Hope you all find this encouraging for how to do it on your own!
Gallery of Images: https://removed/gallery/tHX4fyD
That gallery site was an interesting choice for a post on privacy… My phone has an extra mic installed after trying to navigate it.
Lemmy would only let me upload one photo and while I don't upload galleries often, I know Imgur is not the way to go anymore. Is there a privacy-based free image hosting site I should be using?
I don't get it, you should be able to upload 50 images an hour.
This is good to know. It might have been my app, Blorp on F-Droid, that was the limiting factor for my image upload. Next time I'll try the browser directly. Thanks for posting the stats!
Don't take my word for it, but perhaps a Mastodon post shared to Lemmy. But you'd have to hunt down one that accepted copious amounts of text, and that's saying Lemmy clients would format the result decently.
I don’t know tbh, but I’ve seen many lemmy posts with multiple images… maybe it depends on your client, or were you using the web interface?
But even a Dropbox or google drive wouldn’t have that level of scamware popping up all over the place.
I've been using the F-Droid app Blorp, testing its features. I might try switching to another client and see if the app was the limiting factor.
Also, sorry about the ads in the gallery. I couldn't see them I guess thanks to my pihole/VPN? I stopped using Google Drive and Dropbox ages ago. Nextcloud and Proton Drive are all I have now.