Fixing a Broken BeatsPill With a Missing Charging Port

Hello people of Instrctables world. Long time reader first time publishing. Today we're going to be fixing a dismantled BeatsPill bluetooth speaker, that also has a missing charging port. These BeatsPills are notorious for being susceptible to broken and/or pushed in charging ports, wouldn't expect for it to be such a common issue given the price these are new.. Guess it's a good thing mine was just given to me as scraps from a friend. I decided to do away with the micro usb charging port altogether to avoid a reoccurring problem and add an internal charging cable instead.

My supplies list is not going to be an exact supply list. I used what I had laying around, and based on your situation and available supplies your list may differ from mine.

*Broken BeatsPill
*Small cardboard box
*Paint
*Dry Erase marker
*Pencil
*Exacto knife
*Gorilla Glue
*Glue Stick
*lighter
*Soldering Iron and wire

I had a friend who gave me this broken beats pill, he said that the micro usb charging port got pushed in. From my understanding he opened it up to try and fix the problem at hand but out of pure frustration gave up. Hinting to the reason why more than just the charging port was in need of fixing once I got my hands on it. He said he knows I too like to tinker around with random odds and ends and figured I would eventually figure out a fix for it.

The location where the charging port was originally at had no more traces on it. So doing a quick Solder repair with a new charging port was out of the question. It was time to think outside the box. After a quick search or two on the old inner web I quickly realized I'm on my own here. I learned it was not just the beats pill that had such problems, it seemed that various brands and models of Bluetooth speakers in some way shape or form shared similar fates. So I reached for my trusty Multimeter set to ohms and started to poke around a bit. After doing a few test I located where the positive and negative traces for the charging port ended up at. So I figured my only option would be to directly solder a USB charging cable directly to the circuit board.

After figuring out a potential fix it was time to find a doner case or container or something similar. Knowing the repair would not be feasible unless I found a new home for all the internal components. Once again it was time to think outside the box, that's when it hit me. I had a small box that would be perfect. So I cut off the plastic section that housed the speakers and used that to trace up the location of there new home. I wanted to keep this simple. All I needed was to make cutouts for the speakers the power button and volume buttons. I didn't have a need for the headphone jack and all the other gizmos gadgets so those did not need any new housing holes. Unfortunately the volume buttons were to small to do a half decent cut into the cardboard box so I wired in a potmeter instead. Once all the nessary cutouts were completed it was time to give this plain old brown cardboard box some character. Unfortunately I did not have any black paint at the time but had the next best thing. Black Dry Erase marker after a few good marker coats, I added a few pinstripes, everything I fix make or basically get my hands on I always try to make an effort to add a few pinstripes on it.

Once my paint dried it was time to start putting things back together again. Since I'm now working with cardboard and not a plastic housing screwing everything in place was out of the question. I decided to go with Gorilla Glue the kind that when it dries it turns into a hard foam I figured that would be best to act as a seal for the speakers. While the glue for the speakers were drying I figured this would be a good time to solder in my internal charging cable. I decided to wait to do that last so I would know how long of a cable I would need. After I soldered the cable in place it was time to test it, plugging I the USB cable to the wall I immediately greeted with the charging indicator on the speaker. Once I knew things were good I got a gluestick and melted the tip with a lighter and smothered it where the repair was just done at, to help add durability to the charging cable. I used the rubber part of a flashlight on/off tailcap as the power button rubber cover for my bluetooth speaker. I cut a slit in the back of the box to be able to pull in and out the charging cable as needed. I also poked a small hole in the front towards the top so I can see the led indicator lights green is for charging and white is for connected to device. That can only mean 1 thing, if you have managed to make it as far as to the end of my instructable, then I'm sure there's nothing you can't manage. Thank you for taking the time to read my instructable 1st instructable I sincerely hope someone got something useful out of it.
P.S. I also added a screen shot of my phones connected Bluetooth devices to show beatspill is connected to my phone via Bluetooth.