Feed yourself!
La Fonera to die in one year!
March 19th, 2007 by dan
Mike Puchol (tech.am) revisited the YouTube mith that shows FON’s La Fonera runs so hot that the casing eventually melts, posing a real consumer elecronic hasard.
As unlikely it is, as he concludes, to have the router melt because of its hot inards, he also does a little interesting math, outlining the average lifespan of a Fonera limited to one year due to overheating.
“The capacitors in the Fonera are made by Taicon, a taiwanese manufacturer, and are max-rated for 105ºC. From the datasheet [PDF], at this temperature, the capacitor will fail after some 2000 hours, around 83 days. Following Arrhenius’ Law, and since the area around the capacitors was found to be at around 52ºC, their expected life would be 7800 hours, or about 325 days - what a coincidence, almost a full year, after which your warranty has expired.”
It’s pretty bad news for all enthousiastic Foneros and hey, to the mother company too. That puts a clock on a time bomb in the WiFi industry. The million hotspots Fon wants to plant by 2008 could be just a dream in these circumstances, since half of those will eventually die by the time the deployment is complete. Vaporware, anyone? This is not fun wireless!
Posted in All Wireless, All WiFi, Gadgets | 
March 20th, 2007 at 12:11 am
Is this not out by 10? should it not be a 10 year life for the capacitors
March 20th, 2007 at 12:36 am
They only look at the price ? wtf ?
There is some bad management.
Bad news for the industry.
March 20th, 2007 at 12:56 pm
Could the overheating be caused by the Fonera’s Custom Firmware?
March 20th, 2007 at 1:26 pm
Bob, that’s unlikely. The hardware whould handle the firmware just fine. It’s rather the bad venting and passive cooling. From my perspective, the aluminum dissipator is a tad too small and there’s no vent ducts to rush the hot air out.
March 21st, 2007 at 4:34 am
The operating temperatures of each La Fonera appear to vary quite widely. I have one that runs very hot, and another that runs just very warm. The manufacturer, Accton, may have poor quality control. Some people are reporting that their “dead” AP works fine again if they use an 5v AC adapter from another device.
March 21st, 2007 at 1:26 pm
interesting, Austin!
April 9th, 2007 at 7:42 pm
[…] The infamous YouTube video is probably a hoax, but an expert analysis by Mike Puchol suggests that the electronics may last no more than a year due to heat stress. http://tech.am/2007/03/17/fonera-overheating-are-we-cooking-yet/ http://wirelessisfun.com/2007/03/19/la-fonera-to-die-in-one-year/ […]