Apple’s 1st Generation HomePods are known to offer a superior audio experience with its balanced midtones, crisp treble and a full bass. However, when my HomePod showed symptoms of a power failure, I was quite surprised that an Apple product seemed to have prematurely failed, and wasn’t sure what to do about it. Having spent a bit of a fortune on a number of these units, not mentioning how much I liked how they sounded, I started searching.
What you’ll on YouTube and a number sites, including one from “Nic’s fix“, I decided that it is worth attempting to tackle this repair myself. Kudos goes to Nic, really helpful and I appreciate his initiative to share this with the rest of the world. The HomePod was fixed, but it took me a lot of time while causing some other issues along the way.
Then I started to look at eBay to see if there are others with similar busted HomePods that are for sale, thinking I could always use more HomePods. I mean, which rational human being wouldn’t? Well, you guessed it, there were so many for sale with the same “no-power” issue. After fixing enough many to fit every room in my house with a stereo pair, two pairs for the living room (like two pairs of stereos for surround sound) and two for the garage, my dear wife eventually broke her silence, but you guessed it right again, I could hardly hear her with all these HomePods around 🙂
These HomePods are too beautiful and equally excellent in audio performance that it would be a shame to throw them away. Fixing these and giving them a second life is more about values than price. That is the motive behind the Minn-Tech initiative.
The most common issues plaguing the 1st Generation HomePods are:
- No-Power: The symptom is that the HomePod is completely unresponsive when plugged into a power outlet.
- Death-Fart: A loud “fart” followed with a reboot.
- Random popping: The symptom is that a pop, sometimes loud, occasionally happens when the HomePod is idle.
- No-Base: Well, the woofer does not function at all.
Read on for more on the most common root-causes of the “No-power” and “Death-fart” symptoms, and their repair overviews. For the last two symptoms, I am planning to write separate blogs.
If you have an HomePod with this symptom and would rather have us fix it for you, we’ll gladly do it. Just visit our No-Power Service page for more info.
1. HomePod is unresponsive, aka “No-Power”
This is commonly caused by a short in a 60V 5A PDS560 Schottky barrier Diode. It is a diode on the amplified board and in the more than 50 repairs I have made, these diodes were exclusively of the production batch no 1746 or 1748. These were manufactured in 2017, in batch No’s 46 and 48.
I am not sure what percent of these diodes eventually short out, but certainly most of the shorted ones are of these lots (for those familiar with the Bayes’ theorem, this is an intriguing issue). Below is a photo of a replaced diode from an earlier repair job (2018 Batch 02).
You might be thinking whether your HomePod has a diode from these known batches. Unfortunately, as far as I know, the diode batch numbers are not traceable to HomePod serial numbers, so you cannot simply determine the batch number of the diode from your HomePod’s serial. You have to open up your HomePod to find out, and if you did, you are already more than halfway into replacing the diode.
Replacing this diode is not the most difficult job. It can be done with the right tools, and some experience, as it is very easy to knock off some other components while you’re trying to desolder the malfunctioned diode. See the very tiny capacitor just left of the diode? I have had many cases where that was inadvertently and curiously disappeared. And no, that is not a redundant component.
Typically, replacing that diode will restore your HomePod’s responsiveness. A video of the typical procedure and all the other preventive steps that we take will be featured on the homepage.
If you have an HomePod with this symptom and would rather have us fix it for you, we’ll gladly do it. Just visit our No-Power Service page for more info.
2. HomePod makes a loud “fart” and reboots, aka Death-Farts
The amplifier board also features a series of ceramic 10uF 50V capacitors that degrade in functionality over time. Specifically, there are four such capacitors on the opposing side of the barrier diode of the amplifier board that need replaced. Below is a photo of these four capacitors.
Desoldering these faulty capacitors and soldering new ones in their stead usually addresses this death fart issue.
If you have an HomePod with this symptom and would rather have us fix it for you, we’ll gladly do it. Just visit our Death-Farts Service page for more info.