A friend mentioned that his Pure “One Flow” DAB+ Radio does not turn on anymore. Felt skeptical having a look, as there are no schematics to be found online. But if is going to the landfill anyway – why not having a go ?
Table of Contents
Overview
The radio was looking fine, no sign of exterior damage – except the paint (from the plastic buttons) chipping off:
It is very easy to open. 5 screws in total, the 4 in the corners and one more inside the battery compartment.
Ripped Power Board trace
At first sight, it was overwhelming to look the two densely populated boards and not knowing where to start. I went to the DC IN board to try to figure out how the power gets into the system, when …
I found that the DC Jack ripped away its track:
Now this looked like an easy fix.
Repair
This consisted in:
- running a wire from the dangling pin back to the circuit board
- copious amounts of Super Glue to compensate for the lack of additional support of the DC IN jack
- finding a suitable power adapter and a suitable plug
Running the wire was easy, in the process I have also reinforced the other two pins which had little solder:
Finding a suitable jack was difficult. The size was easy (4.75mm x 1.7mm) but ordering one was not. I was hoping to find them at Amazon for next day delivery but it seems these connectors are not common. I had to wait few days for Mouser to deliver them.
I do have a set of DC Jacks of all sort of sizes, and found one that fitted perfectly, which I measured to see what I have to look for:
The plan was to find a used 5-6V charger at the flea market and fit a new power plug to it. And give this to the friend. As luck would have it, I did find a used 5V @ 2A USB charger.
After soldering, I wrapped the center pin with a bit of the plastic outer sheath that came from the same wire. As an additional precaution preventing accidental bridging. Glued everything down with Super Glue:
The next problem was that the adapter is too short. At 9.5mm tip length, it fits fine directly into the DC IN socket. But the back case of the radio is about 2-3mm thick.
Thus I proceeded to drill a larger hole in the case. Probably the most ecological solution so far:
Testing
Radio works fine:
At 5.5V, it draws about 0.31mA on DAB+ and normal listening volume. At 5V the consumption increases to about 0.34mA, but the USB Charger should be able to provide up to 2A. This is plenty to spare even for when WIFI connects, should my friend decide to use Internet Radio.
I’ve tested it also at 6V (since I initially I found a 6V charger). The radio case mentions 5.5V which is not standard. Although it does seem to work at 6V, it may be that it would have push the voltage regulator too much.
One more saved from the land fill 🙂
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