// HACKER NEWS — CYBERSECURITY
Replacing the old battery on rechargeable bike lights
Hello! Recently I needed bike lights for my bike. And I remembered that I
already had rechargeable bike lights that I bought ten years ago, that I hadn’t
tried in a long time. I tried to recharge them, but after fully charging them,
they only worked for maybe 5 minutes before they turned off again.
I don’t know much about electronics, but I’ve been curious about whether it’s
possible to fix old electronics for a long time, and this seemed like the
perfect repair project because I might just need to replace the battery.
So I went to the local queer makerspace where I’m a member to use the soldering
iron and try to do it! I don’t know much about electronics and this post does
not contain any safety advice because I don’t know much about safety.
I think it’s nice to do projects in a community space where you can get help.
The bike light felt like it was made of silicone, so I cut open the silicone in
a haphazard way along something that vaguely looked like a seam.
I definitely ripped some silicone in the process and it was pretty messy but I
got it open and found the circuit board.
I don’t know the model number of the bike lights but there’s a photo of them at
the end of the post.
There were some screws attaching things together so I removed them so I could
get the circuit board out.
Mostly I tried to remove as few screws as possible because I was worried about
losing them or not being able to put them back after. I probably put the screws
in a bag or something.
I took out the circuit board. Here’s what it looked like:
You can see where the battery is attached, I think it’s left of RI3 and above
Q2.