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I’m working on a Garmin Edge 305 for a friend’s boss which was reported to have a problem finding satellites. After reproducing the problem I opened it up, only to find the body of one of the tactile switches missing and apparently nowhere to be found. This was quite a mystery, as the case had supposedly never been opened before.
After opening and closing the case the not-finding-satellites problem appeared remedied (likely by the full power cycle), but I was confused by the apparently missing button. Rob’s boss had reported that the missing button had been “acting up”, but with all these parts missing the button simply wouldn’t have worked. With the underside of the battery the only place the pieces could have possibly gone I popped out the battery only to find all three pieces stuck in the adhesive which normally holds the battery to the chassis. While they are the size of (large) grains of rice I was able to get the switch reassembled and functioning. Unfortunately, the not-finding-satellites problem is back.
This means that the owner had to have crashed hard enough to blow apart a tactile switch through the rubber housing, bounced it around enough to get all the pieces under the battery, then squished (squeezed?) it all back together. I suspect that in the process a (quite inaccessible) solder connection on the GPS module broke, the metal bits bouncing around the case shorted something out, or something else in the case broke leading to the issue of satellites not being found. It’s too bad I can’t fix that part.