Microscopic bugs in my Kronos...

pete.m · Post by **pete.m** » Mon Jun 25, 2018 10:36 am

Here's a weird one, and maybe not strictly one for the forum, but I'd appreciate your knowledge and advice...

I've had my Kronos for about five years now, and a couple of years ago noticed one or two tiny white bugs around the touchscreen. When I say 'tiny', I mean (at biggest) about the size of a full stop on this screen and usually smaller.

I wiped them away and thought they had gone. But they reappeared a little last Summer and, when I returned yesterday from a month or so away from home, they were back again and in slightly greater numbers. They don't cause any technical issues, of course, and I guess I can even blame them for some of the music that comes out of the Kronos.

I've no idea how they got in there - they may have come from the factory, or from the covering that I use to protect my gear from dust - and I don't know what they live off (maybe arpeggios, or something).

If they were in a laptop, I suppose it would be easy to take the back off and air-blast them out. But that's a harder job with a Kronos. Has anyone else had this problem, and have you been able to solve it?

Shambler · Post by **Shambler** » Mon Jun 25, 2018 10:44 am

Sounds like dust mites, sometimes I see them on my Kindle screen.

If you don't want to see them then vacuum every day - there will still be some around, you'll just see them less

voip · Post by **voip** » Mon Jun 25, 2018 11:41 am

Probably house dust mites, as Shambler suggested. I once bought a sequencer off eBay and, when it arrived, it was crawling with them. Putting it in an environmental chamber at 55degC for an hour cooked them, but not the sequencer. Never had any issues since, but the vacuum cleaner does get quite a bit of use here. Not sure I'd want to try the same trick with any of the keyboards, though. What I have seen, on a couple of occasions in several years, have been tiny flies flitting in and out between the keyboard keys. Bigger than no see ums, they come in from outside, or seem to breed in the soil of indoor plants. They have a habit of flying annoyingly in front of computer screens, and are quite difficult to swat!

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19naia · Post by **19naia** » Mon Jun 25, 2018 2:14 pm

When you said they increased in numbers and you give no certain answer for exactly what kind of bugs they are, their behaviour inside kronos is not certain either.
Best not to wait and find out how they behave and what effect that can have on the device.

I had tiny ants crawling in and out of a small gaming console long time ago and let it go, thinking they were just crawling around.
Eventually my console stopped working and then the TV next to it.
I was in a very damp environment, tropical rain forest very near the cloud forest altitude. Sometimes lite rain for more than 30 days straight.

The damp environment is why i left the console on all the time, to generate internal heat to self dehumidify inside the console.
That heat was drawing the ants in and it was the right temperature for them to incubate eggs.
They were nesting in there and formed a huge cluster of eggs with ants on top of the eggs where all that created a warm moisture area right on the circuitry.
Opened it up to find the console interior totally nested with ant eggs and ants.

So they may be tiny and you see just a few at a time in and out of there, but inside could be a compact cluster of them gathered in and over circuitry and they trap in moisture around their bodies and possibly acids from their droppings that build up over time.
Bad news for circuitry.

At least do regular ridding of them when you see them or go for a more extensive look inside to be sure they don’t have a nesting colony in there.
Up to you how much you want to gamble with not knowing what is going on inside.

After my console and TV issue, some time later, i saw ants crawling into my flipup screen when i had a Korg D-3200. I did a bug spray mist around it a few times. The screen died a week after but i got a korg warranty free screen replacement on it because the technician found no signs of abuse or bug spray damage.
So leaving the bugs can be bad news and fighting them with too much counter measures can also be bad news.

pete.m · Post by **pete.m** » Tue Jun 26, 2018 3:37 pm

Thanks so much for the three replies, and for the sensible warnings and advice. I don't mean to sound sycophantic when I say that this forum is the most helpful one I've ever come across - I learn so much from you guys.

I'm lucky to live somewhere that doesn't suffer from humidity, extremes of temperature or too many problems with insect infestation. So I think my first steps will be to throw out the cloth cover that I have been using to protect my set-up from dust in case the mites are settled in there, and then to buy one of those tiny handheld vacuum cleaners and clean the gear every day. I'll also clean the gear with a lightly-dampened cloth more regularly than I do now. If that doesn't sort it, it'll be time to go deeper...

Thanks again for your help.