I want to repair stuff at events
There’s nothing quite like the satisfaction of fixing something that was broken — especially at a community repair event! But it can be equally frustrating when a repair proves too difficult or even impossible due to lack of decent documentation, unavailable spare parts or repair-unfriendly design.
Restarters.net is our answer to this. It’s a place to share problems, solutions and skills with other repairers as well as record the repairs you make to help us campaign for more repairable products.
Improve your repair knowledge & share your skills
We are a community of repairers with literally centuries of experience between us! If you have trouble with a particular device, chances are there’s someone on the forum—Talk—who’s come across something similar and would be happy to help out. This is also where we share Repair stories : successes 
, questions 
, and oddities 
But more than talking about specific devices, we’re interested in sharing transferable repair skills, which we document on our collaborative repair wiki. This is a great resource for anyone getting started with electronics repair as well as those with more experience.
The Wiki is written and owned by the community and any member is welcome to contribute.
Stay connected with your local repair group(s)
It’s easy to keep up to date with repair events happening in your area. Simply find and follow your local repair group(s) to receive a notification whenever they plan a new event (assuming you’ve opted into emails).
You can also add events to your personal calendar (Google, Outlook, iCal or Yahoo). This is particularly useful if you don’t log in very often but want to remember when events are happening.
Click/tap here to see how
Go the the page for the group whose events you want to follow and click on the calendar button above the list of their events:
Copy the URL that pops up:
In your personal calendar app or website, there should be an option to subscribe to a public calendar. You may need to consult the help page for your calendar app or site. Once you’ve found the option, paste the URL and confirm. Your group’s repair events should now get added to your calendar automatically.
Note: this will keep your calendar updated with any new events your group adds until you unsubscribe.
To help out the organisers, you can also let them know you’re coming by clicking on the RSVP button on the event’s page. Knowing who plans to be there can remove a whole lot of stress for whoever is planning the event.
Your local group has the option to use Talk (this forum) to send out messages. So keep an eye on your inbox to stay in the loop.
You can choose whether or not to receive messages from Talk via email in your email preferences. Emailed messages are helpful if you don’t log in often, especially as you can reply to them directly from your email client. Learn more about adjusting your notifications or about how to use Talk.
Bring down the barriers to repair
Every repair you make not only reduces waste and greenhouse gas emissions, but can also help us learn more about why devices fail and what makes repairing them difficult.
We can all probably list common issues with various products (like failing elements in a toaster and smashed screens on phones) as well as lots factors that make repair more complicated (such as the use of glue not screws, unavailability of spare parts and so on). But wouldn’t it be useful to quantify these?
For every event, we record as much data as we can about each repair. So far, we’ve logged well over 20,000 repair attempts together and are using this data to help us campaign for the Right to Repair.
We can also use this data to learn more about what goes wrong with our devices, such as why computers break.
It’s easy to record your repairs yourself, and by doing so, you might just be helping shape the products of the future!
Note: it is possible to record non-electrical items! More info here.
