# Stew Brew Witch Electronics Repair



## Blancaster (Nov 19, 2016)

2017 I purchased the Stew Brew Witch with child and fog from a small online store that was advertising in one of the haunt pages on Facebook. The prop worked great for the 2017 Halloween season. I packed it away in its original box once Halloween was over. I pulled her out and assembled her for the 2018 season and she was dead. I discovered by jiggling the power cord right where it plugs into the controller box I could get some flashing of the lights and some movement and sound. I tried again with a known working (identical) cord from another prop, same result. I took the control box apart and there was small piece of broken solder rattling around inside. Upon further inspection I found that the solder joint that connected the power adaptor to the board was cracked. I really suck at soldering so I took it to a local business that fixed the solder joint for a few dollars. I got home and put it all back together. I plugged the power cord in and set the switch to the motion setting. I got nothing.... I set the switch to the always on position and I get a continuous popping noise instead of sound. The lights in the eyes and cauldron flash in sync with the popping sound and the mechanics move, but very very slowly. I'm assuming I shorted something out when I was jiggling the cord prior to my disassembly. I tried to make contact with the online store that I purchased it from, they are non-existent. I emailed the person at their paypal email as well as the email address I found on the emailed invoice. No luck. I discovered what company manufactured this product, they no longer can get parts for this item (from china). So basically I'm stuck with a non working, overpriced prop. Is there a way to revive her or put her on a new controller board?


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## corey872 (Jan 10, 2010)

I would say the answer is a definite 'maybe'. With enough troubleshooting and new parts, most anything can be made to work again. The two main issues I see:

1) If this company is no longer in business and/or made very limited numbers of this prop, it might be pretty hard to source a complete drop-in replacement board.

2) If you aren't comfortable soldering and working with the electronic components, and have to pay a shop for each solder joint, you can pretty easily sink more money in the repair than it would cost to just buy something else.

Some things you can try:

Give the circuit board another visual look - with a magnifying glass if possible. If one solder joint was bad, there might be others. Or if there were loose pieces of solder, perhaps others are lodged somewhere else in the circuit. While you're in there, does anything appear to be burned, overheated, cracked, discolored, loose from the board, etc? If so, that might be another bad component.

Check out the repaired area. Sometimes when a solder joint breaks loose, it will pull the copper trace off the circuit board. If a repair isn't made correctly, the new solder will have a hard time 'bridging the gap' to the remaining copper trace.

Give it the 'jiggle test' - assuming this is all low voltage (ie don't do this on a mains circuit), you can power up the circuit, then gently poke/jiggle various wires and components. Are any loose or does the prop intermittently work when poking a certain wire or component? If so, that area might need extra attention.

Voltage / current checks. If you have a volt meter, you can make sure the power supply is putting out the rated voltage and see what the prop is drawing for current. This may give some insight to the operation.

Component check. If you can identify the various component functions and values, you can check them to make sure each is functioning as intended.

Arduino replacement? Guess this would be on the most "complex" end of the spectrum, but there are a lot of open source arduino prop controllers. Or with a little programming knowledge, you can whip up your own controller to take charge of the witch.


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## BillyVanpire (Apr 22, 2015)

great reply corey, only thing i would say is post some pics/video of the prop & the board.


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## trachcanman99 (Sep 4, 2015)

before you go stick your finger into the circuit board to poke and jiggle, I suggest instead of your finger use the eraser on a pencil, things could prove to be less shocking. either way not something I would suggest to someone who is not very familiar with electronics.


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