A handy hack that can make a product more efficient and cheaper can sometimes have disadvantages and unforeseen issues, as a user discovered with their Meaco Arete dehumidifier.
When one segment of the cheap LED display dies and shorts out, it is read as a stuck button and causes the microcontroller to lock up due to the multiplexing scheme used in the interface.
This issue was found last summer, but unless users had the particular dehumidifier and searched for the problem, it would not have been found.
Simply removing the display solves the issue, and a replacement is available online, but this is not a suitable solution for a faulty component that is prone to failure.
Instead, optimisation of the product could be attributed to the cause of the issue, which seems to have affected many users, with an iFixit guide on how to replace the display now available.
However, this is a top-rated dehumidifier, so it is a shame that it is let down by this common issue.
