Thursday, January 5, 2023

Troubleshooting 101: read the manual, repeat as necessary

 Against the advice of my Facebook consultants, I purchased a monitor with a built-in webcam about two years ago this week.  An ASUS BE24E series.  Everyone said that not only is the quality of standalone webcams better but built-in ones tend to break leaving you with useless hardware.  Think TV/VCR combos.

Well, the webcam worked for a while until it didn't.  Sometime in the late fall of 2021, it stopped working.  I'm not 100 % sure when it stopped working because I don't use it every day.  I just remember


testing it out for an interview, it not working, and me going to my box of cords and hardware and using one of the many detached cameras I've come across over the years.

Periodically, I'd try to troubleshoot it but it was never a priority.  This week, however, as I was working on another home project, I came across the manual that came with the monitor.  It's mostly pictorial but I noticed something I hadn't before.  If you are using a VGA connection instead of HDMI (or DVI I suppose) you need to use a USB firewire for the camera to work.

This might be common knowledge among my nerdier tech friends but I apparently forgot this step.  I'm guessing that when I first got the monitor, more detailed instructions came with and I used a firewire.  I must have forgotten it when I moved the computer from the middle bedroom to the office.  

It's nice to have a fully working monitor again.  It would be nice to be fully working myself.  


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