The fine line between desperation and insanity

[rootboy]

Or how I field modified my new iPod battery.


I bought one of those Newer Tech 2200 maH batteries and in the process of swapping the pins I must of shorted it. Sigh.

I went ahead and installed it, and sure enough, even though my hp320 said it was charging, when I pulled the adapter plug out the player just died. No power coming out of the battery whatsoever.

Measuring the voltage from the battery show that it was putting out a negative .3 volts.

Crap! What to do, what to do...

I've had li-ion batteries apart before and there is a tiny circuit board that the battery hooks to. Both the iPod battery and the iRiver each have a circuit board in them.

Looking at each board there was more than a passing resemblance. Hmmmm....

In fact both boards looked pretty much identical with the exception that the layout was a bit different.

So I unsoldered each of the boards, noted the polarity of the batteries (which happens to be the same), and soldered the iRiver circuit board to the iPod's battery.

I had to make a tiny jumper for the positive tab on the iPod battery to the positive pad on the iRiver circuit board because the iPod battery terminals are spaced out further than the iRivers.

Then I layed a piece of electrician's tape down behind where the circuit board rests and another piece where the iPod battery's plus terminal folded over (this would normally be on the solder tab but because of the spacing it would land on one of the IC's if I didn't insulate it).

I left the back cover off while doing the initial charge. Alongside of the battery I had a pair of wirecutters in case things started getting interesting and I had to quickly ditch the battery.

But everything seems to be working fine. However this is only the second charge on the battery, so it's hard to say if it will continue to work (or if I even get the full use of the battery!). But it didn't blow up, and that counts for something...


And of course it needs to said that this is a pretty dangerous thing to do. In fact, you would have to be a complete idiot to do something like this.


For what it's worth, the next time I change out the battery, I'm going to simply unsolder the leads on the battery itself and swap them there. That's a hell of a lot easier than trying to swap pins at the connector end.


This is how I *wished* that I had done it:

Take your time and be very careful about what you do.

Peel the label back to expose the board. Save the label.

The Newer Tech battery has some sort of glue (silicone?) where the leads are soldered the circuit board so scrape that off.

Be sure to scrape the glue away with something non-conductive (otherwise you run the risk of shorting out the battery and ruining the circuit board).

Note where each of the wires are landed, write it down so you don't forget.

Now unsolder the red & black wires and swap them. Keep in mind that doing this using the iPod wires and socket will make the red wire negative and the black wire positive. This is not desirable...

A better solution would be to open up your old iRiver pack and unsolder those wires and use them on the iPod battery. This would make the red wire positive and the black wire negative (just as God intended). This is what I would do since it keeps the wire colors correct (it's that important).

Make sure that there is no bare spot on the wires past the solder pads (meaning that the wire insulation goes all the way to the solder pad) that might be able to bend over and short out against its neighbor (that being the other wire).

Put a dab of silicone glue there just like the Newer Tech boys did.

Put your label back on and plug your new battery in.

Please note that this method does not use the circuit board from the old iRiver pack, just the leads. And it shouldn't be tried if you have little to no experience using a soldering iron.

[reddshack]

Wow good guide. Let us know how the battery works out. Pictures maybe?

[rootboy]

Okay, but they are incredibly crappy. All I had to work with was my cell phone...

The zip file contains a larger version of the same shot. I used it to get around the 19.5k restriction.

[rootboy]

So far it's working great.

[jumbuck]

Very handy to know it can be done that way.

[gorcorps]

Sweet idea, and glad it's working to! When I first read the title I first thought of Spinal Tap for some reason:
"There's such a fine line between stupid and... and clever."

[Drumr]

Originally Posted by gorcorps

Sweet idea, and glad it's working to! When I first read the title I first thought of Spinal Tap for some reason:
"There's such a fine line between stupid and... and clever."

since im slowly watching the first season of lost, i thought of rose saying "Theres a fine line between denial and faith... i like it better on my side"

[rootboy]

So far, so good! It's working perfectly.