is figuring out this sort of stuff an exercise of trying to reverse engineer the product, or is it much simpler than I make it out to be? whenever I want to try and fix something all the videos I see people just magically know which places shouldn’t be shorting, and magically know which capacitor is causing it
It can be simple, you don't have to understand why something is wrong to know that it's wrong. They magically know it's the capacitor because it's the usual suspect, and they usually look swollen (the capacitor not necessarily the youtuber). Common problems are common, which is why youtube is pretty great because somene has probably had the same problem and posted the fix.
is figuring out this sort of stuff an exercise of trying to reverse engineer the product, or is it much simpler than I make it out to be? whenever I want to try and fix something all the videos I see people just magically know which places shouldn’t be shorting, and magically know which capacitor is causing it
It can be simple, you don't have to understand why something is wrong to know that it's wrong. They magically know it's the capacitor because it's the usual suspect, and they usually look swollen (the capacitor not necessarily the youtuber). Common problems are common, which is why youtube is pretty great because somene has probably had the same problem and posted the fix.