Hello,
The camera / mic kill switch of my new librem 15 is broken. Somehow it came loose and is now sitting in the hole – similar to this I guess: Librem 13v2: Camera killswitch pushed into hinge, can't turn it back on
Do I really have to send the laptop all the way back to the USA to get it fixed?
thanks for any replies,
Aron.
Hi,
where are you located, I mean, which country?
Cheers
nicole
currently in the netherlands
OK, let me check back with our service, maybe we can arrange something through Germany.
Cheers
nicole
Thank you.
I’d also welcome a fix-it guide, should you have one. I am not averse to taking apart and reassembling my electronics.
Please get in touch with me by email for further details: nicole.faerber@puri.sm
Cheers
nicole
any idea how this happened? Possibly some speculation so that we can be careful not to get into the same situation 
I live in India and I guess I would either need to fix it myself / live with it. Sending mine back would be a though exercise.
No specific idea.
I was flipping the switch and it came loose… Or rather, when I went to flip the switch it just disappeared under my finger.
odd, I wonder if it underwent undue pressure before hand, maybe with the lid closed the switch got pushed in?
Status: Still waiting for an update from Nicole on how / where to fix this.
I wonder if it underwent undue pressure before hand, maybe with the lid closed the switch got pushed in?
I couldn’t say.
I do remember that the lid wasn’t fully open when I was operating the switch - I reached in the the semi-open laptop to flip the switch.
Same here. Just after 2 months of usage of my librem 15 v3 the kill switch camera / microphone broke off and cannot be used anymore. Since I am not an IT hardware specialist I am not daring to open the computer and see if I can fix it myself. Maybe some background information: the switch was quite hard to operate right from the start but worked … until it broke. Hope my feedback is helpful to you guys at the design team for future hardware releases,
… and now, my last remaining kill switch broke i.e. the wifi.
That means, I cannot use any of those two switches anymore. Fortunately, both broke on the on position, so at least I can use camera / microphone and wifi. I do not want to think of what I would have done if they had brokeen in the off position.
Just for background information: I hardly used the switches, maybe once every other month at a maximum.
As said in my post before, I hope you guys take this into account for the next hardware design, so fthat uture users do not run into the same problem.
BTW:
Does anyone have a suggestion how I can repair the kill switches or at least what I could do in order to make them usable again? Has anybody experience in opening up the laptop and “messing around” with the kill switch mechanisms?
Thanks a lot!
Variant of the solution for the future. Mechanical switches on the PCB may need to be replaced with reed switches on the PCB and sliding or rotating magnets on the laptop casing. This will significantly increase the number of switch duty cycles and eliminate unnecessary openings in the laptop casing.
My switch came loose again shortly after it was fixed. I found however that I can still operate the switch by applying considerable pressure vertically…
What I do is press down on the plastic surrounding the switch to ‘squash’ everything in place. The plastic bends down and the switch, though nominally loose, has no ability to move, and I am able to flip the switch.
It takes some practice, but has been working just about well enough.
I agree though that this has_to_change with the next version of the hardware.
The plastic of my Wifi killswitch broke. I can still switch it on and of by using a toothpick. However, is there a way to replace it? Is there a possibility to order a spare part for it?