4mo ago

Replaced the battery on my wireless headset this evening

Finally got around to replacing the battery in my Razer Nari headset, after years of it only lasting <1 hour on battery power. Couldn't get the soldering with my old iron after over an hour of fucking with it, got frustrated and went to home depot at 8:30 at night to get an iron that isn't older than I am and one of those little clip holder things. Took less than 10 minutes to put the last 2 wires on with a functional tool. Got a new multimeter too. Forgot to take pictures of the completed job though, my bad.

It's turning off during charging occasionally which i think means the first 2 connections might be fucked up, so i might go back and fix those and install the USB-C port I bought for it this weekend.

9 comments

Hell yeah man, there's just something so rewarding about fixing shit yourself. A good soldering iron is absolutely worth it if you have the skills to wield it.
- Facts. I would also add that it might be easier than one thinks. I had assumed that my last couple attempts that resulted in marginal connections were just a skill issue, but the beads with the new iron came out, like, an order of magnitude better. There's several electronics with shorts in their wires/ports that I haven't attempted to fix assuming I would just finish breaking them, and now I'm wondering how much I've thrown away that should have been trivial to repair.
  
  Yes. Tries my hand at soldering during COVID. Got some tips online and practised. With the right equipment things go well.
  
  Man, yeah, people out there treat soldering like it's this mystical art form where a lot of things can go wrong or be mysteriously off or super hard.
  For most easy repairs it's very straightforward. There are tons of videos of people fixing things on Youtube and anybody can probably replicate a decent solder joint for a cable or a larger PCB component after watching a couple. Tiny surface mounted stuff may be beyond a cheap iron and some patience, but if all you need is to swap something connected with wires or replace a blown fuse you can probably figure it out.

Repairs FTW ! 🛠️

Well done! I did some exploratory surgery on my Fenix 6 recently as the vibration motor had stopped working properly. Easy to take a part and probably easy to repair - just have to find a spare part somewhere.

Drown it in flux for best results. Use an aggressive flux too, the no-clean flux for surface mount devices is only good for contacts unmolested by a soldering iron.
- The bigger the blob the better the job! (jk of course, but some friends of mine always say this when talking about soldering shit)

Thank you for reminding me: I have an electric shaver that is perfectly good except the batteries do not hold a charge.
Being able to do this kind of repair will save you money in the long run, as well as keeping stuff out of the waste stream.

9 comments