Comment by namuol

Comment by namuol a year ago

You can get “broken” ones on EBay pretty cheap. Be careful prying them open though - there’s no aftermarket shells unfortunately.

I spent a weekend not long ago upgrading a broken Sansa Clip+ with a new battery, RockBox, and a USB-C port - first one with USB-C AFAIK. Oh and I replaced all the SMD buttons too while I was at it.

I’m very happy with how it turned out! I only wish I knew how to do something more advanced like adding Bluetooth audio capability that doesn’t just hook into the DAC output and sound terrible.

forgotacc240419 a year ago

How was the usb c installation? Feels a bit beyond my soldering skills. I mainly use a zip but I put together a very slim mini to c cable for my Clip+ that does the job.

Don't suppose you could tell me the name of the part they use for the headphone jack? I can find loads that look almost right but never the exact model

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namuol a year ago

It was pretty intense, but mostly because I’m clumsy and didn’t plan anything.
There’s not a lot of room on the board, so I soldered 0402 resistors directly to the pins on the port to allow it to work with modern PD chargers, and I had to expose a few traces so I could jump the pins since it didn’t align with the mini usb pads. Fortunately I was able to solder its feet to the main structural pads and it’s a good firm connection.
I bought an assorted usb-c port kit from Amazon with something like 10 varieties and chose the port that best fit onto the board. I needed to bend the legs a bit but it worked.
I used a digital microscope and fine solder tips. There’s no “easy” way to do this that I’m aware of, especially since I chose low melt solder to avoid melting the port’s plastic, which meant the jumper wire conducted enough heat to desolder the other connection if I didn’t work quickly!
This experience had me wondering if I could design a little thin adapter pcb to make the process less error prone, but I’ve never done anything like that before…
What’s wrong with your audio port? To find a replacement you might want to get some cheap calipers and measure a bunch of stuff to compare with components on digikey/mouser/aliexpress.
Or you may just be able to repair it instead of replacing it. Could be it just needs its pins reflowed to the board if you haven’t tried that yet. I hope you can fix it - good luck!

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- forgotacc240419 a year ago
  
  Oh yeah that's way beyond me! I might do a mini to micro mod first, that seems relatively quite easy
  The common headphone jack issue is that one of the pins comes loose very easily but that's a very simple fix of adding some extra solder. Beyond that the audio port gradually gets looser to the point headphones will very easily fall out; I think if you just never remove the headphones this will be much less likely to happen.
  The main failures I've seen on eBay are: - dead battery (these are often in amazing condition otherwise because they were bought and hardly used) - loose audio jack (simple solder fix but may have the looseness issues) - broken membrane buttons (probably not very fixable?) - faded screen (probably has lots of other issues but generally usable)
  
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  namuol a year ago
  
  Yeah the buttons are actually tactile switches - it was hard to find ones that fit but eventually I found a good match on Ali express. You want 4.8x4.8x0.55mm smd thin film tactile switches. [1]
  Only one button was malfunctioning but I replaced them all since they looked pretty worn.
  If you’re thinking of switching to micro usb you might as well try usb-c. AFAIK you’ll still need to deal with alignment issues. The resistors are only necessary if you want to use modern PD chargers - they make little boards with these attached already but it may be impossible to fit one of those.
  [1] https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256806815314132.html
  
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  forgotacc240419 a year ago
  
  Probably worth posting your work somewhere, I feel like there's probably a subreddit or two that would be interested (maybe the Rockbox forum too?).
  Could definitely make a decent markup buying broken ones and reselling them all fixed up too; I got seven "broken" ones a few months ago on eBay for $20 and almost all of them just had dead batteries
  
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