Reddit Secret Santa 2014

Jenn and I participated in the Reddit Secret Santa this past Christmas. We got matched and sent out our gifts. Jenn got her giftee a poster of the stadium that her giftee liked the team of, a copy of the Cosmos book, and then crocheted a team color stocking. I got mine some a couple signed comic books from an artist he liked and a copy of "A is for Armageddon".

We then waited for our gifts.

And waited.

And waited.

And got nothing.

I was put back into the pool and got re-matched instantly. Jenn's Secret Santa had marked that they shipped, but nothing ever showed up. She marked that she didn't get anything but wasn't re-matched this time.

Yesterday, I got the first of two boxes that my re-match sent.

Oh no, Johnny Five! You've been Empire Strikes Back C3PO'ed.

Opening up the box, I found... a... disassembled bluetooth speaker. Hrm, Jawbone Jambox  I managed to plug it in and got the most loudest hiss ever and the speaker angrily buzzed and was just horrible.

On the workbench

I don't have a bluetooth speaker and having one on my workbench would be nice. Having to fix my gift isn't really a problem, I was just hoping it was fixable. With as loud as that static was, this would be a great speaker to use while I work.

So, I did a little futzing around and came to the idea that the non-removable battery probably died (as a lot of people on Jawbone's website complain about). I disassembled it the rest of the way...

1.21 Gigawatts later

It looks like the battery was spitting out 3.3v. So, I desoldered the original batter and put on my own. I have a USB->Serial board that I have been using to load some ESP8266's with that puts out 3.3v from USB plug. So I hooked it up and it worked fine. Now, leaving it plugged in this way kind of defeats the purpose of being a portable speaker, so I started looking for a replacement and realized that it takes the same battery as...

Now you are Playing with Power!

The Nintendo DS.

I have a few of these batteries spare from repairing systems, so I soldered it on and let it charge.

The speaker works great. Now I just need to reassemble it.

Reassembled

And now it has been reassembled and is playing music via bluetooth on battery power.

Hi from Batesville

I am waving at the passing Google car.

Earlier this year, Google caught me on film just outside of the Hill-Rom manufacturing plant. Hello out there in Internet-land.