Rechargeable Childrens Book

I was tired of constantly purchasing LR44 Batteries for a few of my son's books. Sure, they're not expensive and they're widely available...but I swear this book rotates them out every two weeks. Even when it's off the batteries discharge. I came up with an idea. Seeing the batteries produce 1.5v each and they're running in series and there's three of them, that puts them up to 4.5v total. Most 4.5v items will also run off of a 5v USB outlet/port/battery pack. With my knife in hand and some spare time, I began deconstruction to hopefully breathe a new life into this consumptuous book.

Battery Operated Childrens Book

USB-A Cable

USB Wall Adapter or Rechargeable battery pack

Some kind of glue

Gently work a putty knife or something similar around the sound panel, between the panel and the paperboard book cover. It may take a couple times around in order to get it fully separated from the cover. Take your time to ensure that you don't damage the cover too much.

Once you have the sound panel separated, remove any excess glue and paper from the sound panel and make sure there aren't any flaps of paper on the cover that are loose.

Clip off the opposite end of the USB-A Cable. You don't need that end and can toss it when you're done!

Strip the cable cover back and you'll find a handful of wires. Depending on the USB cable, you may have grabbed a cable that only has a red(positive) and black(negative), or you may have one with five or six wires inside. Most of the time you will be able to find the positive & negative wires easily. I've noted in the photo which wires are included in the cable I have used.

You won't need the shielding or data wires for this project, so feel free to bend them back and tape them off so you only have two wires to focus on.

Strip about 1/8" to 1/4" of the positive and negative wires.

Unscrew all the necessary screws around your soundboard. This will likely include the battery cover. Go ahead and look at the internal area and familiarize yourself.

What you're looking at is pretty simple. You're only focused on two wires. These two wires are labeled on the circuit board within this picture, but yours may vary. If you don't have a label on the board and are unsure which wire is to connect to which terminal, look how the battery connects to the terminals themselves. With this example, you can see the positive side of the battery is pointed up, so we can safely say that any portion of that battery that connects to the wire(red) will be conducting positive. Since the negative portion of the battery is pointed down, only the battery terminal touching the bottom with the wire will be the negative(black).

Give yourself a few inches of extra cable, then tie a simple knot in there. We'll come back to that later.

You can easily connect a few different ways. I prefer to use solder and directly connect to the board, but not everyone has a solder iron.

If you're soldering: Heat up the iron, touch the tip to the board and remove the positive and negative wires that connect to the battery area. Note which is which to prevent any issues. Grab your USB cable and solder the Positive(red) wire to your positive terminal. Next solder the Negative(grey or unlined) wire to the Negative terminal.

If you're not soldering: Cut the positive and negative wires that come from the battery area about half of the length. Strip off a 1/4" both the red and black wire coming from the circuit board(formerly connected to the battery area). Take your USB cable and twist together the red wire to the red wire coming from the circuit board, do the same with the negative/black wire. Once they are twisted together securely, tape them off so they don't connect to each other or something else.

I've included photos of both different connection types so you can see how each looks.

On the bottom(side or top if you prefer), carve out a small divot in the edge of the cover. This will allow your USB cable to pass through the bottom of the plastic cover. If you didn't tie a knot in the previous step, please do so now. This will prevent the cable from pulling off of the circuit board or disconnecting easily. See the photos for an example of how this works.

Take the screws you set aside in the beginning and screw them all back in place. Make sure to run the cable that you've been working with through the divot you carved out in the previous step.

I forgot to take a photo.

I used construction adhesive to adhere the plastic to the paperboard of the book. If I had to guess, maybe gorilla glue, e6000, or another glue would work. I used construction adhesive because I don't ever expect the need to take this apart again.

Free from the constant depletion of LR44 batteries, carry the book with pride. Connect it to a battery pack(or usb wall adapter if you put a long enough cable on) and read the book whilst pressing buttons. Show this to your significant other while standing tall and demand praise. Also, just let the kid enjoy it too.

Please note, I'm doing this with my own book and items, at my own risk. If you choose to proceed with this project, please disconnect the battery when not in use, understand that you're doing this at your own risk and that you could end up with a pile of unusable garbage. I guess if you failed you could just trim off the edge of the book and read it all analog like the olden days. But yeah, just be safe, have fun and make something last a little longer.