This episode of Dull Men is brought to you by The 1990’s. The 1990’s: They Sucked, But You Probably Miss Them Anyway!^™

My house is full of ceiling fans, all but one of which have a janky, decades old battery operated remote control associated with them. The one in the kitchen dies all the time, it takes a single AA battery, no real problem. Last night, at like, 2 in the morning, I wanted to turn the one in the living room on. The remote is dead. Okay, lemme go get a AA…the battery door is oddly small.

I pop it open, there’s a battery as big around as a AAA but half the length. Ah shit it’s an N cell. What braniac looked at a AAA and went “still too huge.” Dammit. Are N cells 1.5 or 3 volts? I don’t have one but maybe I can rig up one or two AAs…A23? 12 volts? What in the, why does a remote control need automotive voltage?

Okay, The Past, you may be infinitely large, and full of infinite incompetence, but jokes on you: I’m from The Past. I’ll see your bullshit, and raise you shenanigans.

I got out my tacklebox. From my tacklebox I got out my breadboard power supply and some jumper wires. I found a 20V DC wall wart in my bin O’ wall warts with a center positive barrel jack on it. I used my multimeter to regulate it down to 12.5V, figure it’s an open circuit, I jammed the pins of the jumper wires into the springs in the remote, and turned on my ceiling fan.

Now that the remote receiver in the fan is “on” the pull chain on the fan works.