Inside the Plume SuperPods

I few years ago, Virgin Media sent me their "Intelligent WiFi Plus Pods". They're part of a mesh network which is meant to improve WiFi coverage around your house.

They were basically fine, but they are hardcoded to your Virgin Media service so can't be used for anything else. I eventually swapped to a different router and they became useless. Virgin refuse to collect them (despite repeatedly promising to) so I decided to crack one open.

I was hoping there would be a reset pin or something in there - but I can't find any easy way to jailbreak them. Anyway, here are the photos.

A spludger around the edges was enough to pop off the plastic cover.

There's a huge heat-sink and a small fan. The plastic casing comes away easily.

The fan is easy to unscrew and the power connector pops off.

Once that's off, the heatsink can be removed by unscrewing it and prising it off.

Splodges of pink gunk - which I assume is thermal paste rather than reconstituted meat - is present. Pulling the main circuit board out shows the power board.

That's tough to remove without damaging the live and neutral contacts. Once done, you can see the capacitors.

There you go. Nothing stunningly interesting or useful for debugging.