Labists Starter Kit For Raspberry Pi 4: Everything you need to know

Description

Interested in a Labists Starter Kit For Raspberry Pi 4? In this episode, Harley unboxes, assembles and runs through the initial setup wizards for one of these kits.

Sign up for book updates: https://list-optin.house-of-hacks.com/
The kit I got: https://amzn.to/3oYXY45 (Affiliate link)
A list of different kits: https://amzn.to/2TZj187 (Affiliate link)

Here at House of Hacks we do tutorials, project overviews, tool reviews and more related to making things around the home and shop. Generally this involves wood and metal working, electronics, photography and other similar things. If this sounds interesting to you, you may subscribe here.

If you’re interested in learning more about the House of Hacks' values, here’s a playlist for you.

And here’s the most recent video.

For a written transcript, go to Labists Starter Kit for Raspberry Pi 4.

Here's a list of the tools I use.

Music under Creative Commons License By Attribution 4.0 by Kevin MacLeod at http://incompetech.com.
Intro/Exit: "Hot Swing"

Contents

• 0:00 Introduction
• 1:34 Unboxing
• 7:14 Assembly
• 18:11 Setup
• 20:37 First time startup

Transcript

Introduction

Today at the House of Hacks we're going to unbox and setup this Labists Raspberry Pi Starter Kit.

OK, the box it comes in is nice and sturdy, not much to it.

Just kind of your basic box.

We're going to go ahead and open this up.

It's got a couple anti-tamper stickers on it.

And we'll just open this up.

Recently I've had some ideas floating around my head for some projects where it needed a little bit more computing power than what an Arduino supplies but I still wanted to be fairly close to the hardware.

So, of course the Raspberry Pi is a great solution for this.

Having never worked with Raspberry Pis before I didn't have anything and I wanted a starter kit to just get going quickly.

So, I searched on Amazon and found this Labists Starter Kit. It came with pretty high reviews and seemed to be pretty complete. So I went ahead and got one.

It's supposed to have a case and power supply and other miscellaneous things that you need to get started.

It doesn't have a keyboard or monitor, of course, but I have those in plenty.

I went ahead and got one of these. It has 8 GB of RAM and 128 GB SD card and so I thought I'd open this up and show you what it takes to get started.

If we're just meeting, I'm Harley. Welcome. This is the House of Hacks where I make stuff.

Usually out of metal or wood, other kinds of media like that. Sometimes it includes things like Arduinos and Raspberry Pis.

Unboxing

It starts off with a Raspberry Pi Model B. 8 gig of RAM.

That looks like the main box or the main computer.

I have to rip the box and there's the Pi.

They are pretty small little units, aren't they?

It has the connectors on the side. The power supply.

Network. USB. Looks like USB 2 and 3.

And yeah, there's not much to it. Not much bigger than an Arduino.

Just for size comparisons, there's an Arduino Uno.

It's a little bit bigger but about the same size.

Digging more into the box...

Packing material.

Oh, and inside this box looks like there's some basic instructions and a fairly large piece of paper with multiple language instructions.

We've got a Quick Start Guide.

A power supply... with an on/off switch.

Labists power supply.

We have, looks like a case.

I assume it snaps open somehow. I won't do that on camera but it's got holes for the connectors.

It must go this way. There's the connectors that way and that way.

And interestingly, it looks like it has a 1/4-20 connector on there which I'm guessing they may have it setup for putting a camera on this. That kind of looks like a camera hole. I don't know exactly.

That looks like a hole for a lens on a camera. They might have an aboard board camera you could put on there and then that would be for taking pictures with.

Interesting little concept.

HDMI cable.

This looks like another HDMI cable.

That's definitely HDMI... and that's definitely HDMI.

So, two HDMI cables.

A cute little tiny fan.

I assume that goes in the case.

An SD card that says Raspbian on it. So, I assume it's preloaded with the operating system. That's handy.

I don't recognize that.

I'll have to read the manual for that one.

A little screwdriver for mounting the fan.

Some heat sinks.

And that's it.

So, everything that comes in the box.

Those are the things that are inside the box in this kit. I want to get into the setup of this and see what happens when we turn it on for the first time but before that I do have an exciting announcement.

Those are you that have been around the channel for awhile may have noticed that my uploads this year have been down from previous years.

That's not because I've been slacking off but because I've been working on a new project.

This is a beginner's guide to working with electronics, specifically the Arduino ecosystem.

So, if you've been interested in getting Arduinos into your projects but don't know anywhere to begin, this book is for you.

I talk about three things in it...

Basic electronics. What is a transistor. What is a resistor. Real basic things like that.

And then I talk about how to setup a computer to program an Arduino.

And third, I talk about the basic elements of what goes into an Arduino program and the fundamental programming issues related to that.

If this is something that's interesting to you, I've left a link down below for a mailing list where I'll be announcing when the book is released and also providing a discount code for those that are interested.

Assembly

Now that we've got everything unpacked, let's assemble this.

The Quick Start Guide is fairly thick and a bit intimidating at first glance but there's six languages in here so for any one language there's only about four pages.

Half of those four pages are how to install the operating system on a blank SD card.

The SD card that comes with this is already pre-formatted so we don't need to worry about those two pages.

About half of the rest is specifications and what comes in the kit.

So there's really about a page, page and a half, of actual instructions for getting started and those seem to be really clear in reading things over.

I don't have any questions off the top of my head.

We'll see how complete they are once we get into it and see if we have any questions.

The mystery piece that I wasn't sure when I was unboxing it is actually an SD card reader which is kind of handy.

It's a type C connector. It pulls apart and there's the connector for plugging into USB and there's where the SD card goes in on the back side.

So that's kind of cute. It's an inexpensive one. It's not great but I'm sure it works for the purposes that we have here today.

There's really only a couple steps we need to do.

We need to install the heat sinks onto the card.

We need to install the fan into the case.

And then we need to install the card into the case and put it all together.

Finally we can install the SD card after the card is in the case and then apply power and keyboard and monitor and see how it works.

They do say that you don't want to have the SD card in the computer when you're trying to put it in the case.

I think there's a fitment problem trying to get it all lined up and stuff.

So you put the card in after everything is assembled and put together.

So, let's get to this.

First we're going to put the heat sinks on the chips and the manual says exactly which ones they go onto and they are self adhesive so they should go on fairly easily.

We've got this one goes on that chip.

We've got this square one that goes on the main CPU.

And then we have this other smaller one that goes on, looks like the chip that's right there.

So that's how it's assembled.

Time to get out the tools.

I've got a pick that works really well for taking off things like self-adhesive tape when it's hard to get off.

That one wasn't too bad.

So that goes on... try to get my fat fingers in here on this little board. That goes on that chip.

Just press it on.

This self-adhesive tape isn't too bad to take apart. Sometimes it can be a real pain.

That does on that chip.

And this goes on the last one.

I assume that is the primary CPU. It's this metal cased one.

That was easily done and I didn't need the pick at all.

So now we want to install things in the case.

The case just pulls apart. There's a little handle there.

And there's screws for mounting the board and there's screws for mounting the fan.

It seems that there's more screws there than I actually need.

And this case also is designed for a camera. I didn't get the camera option but there is a hole in the case and mounting space to snap a camera in there.

The fan can go in two ways. There's no indication of air flow.

I don't know that it really makes a difference which way it goes in.

I'll put it in this way so the strain relief on the cable pulls up.

The self tapping screws go into the fan. They have a round head on the top.

They're a bit longer than the screws in the other package that are for the card.

You don't want to torque them down too tight since you may strip out the plastic.

You just need to make them so it holds things in without rattling.

And that's the fan in there.

Next we need to mount the board.

It's pretty obvious. There's big holes in the case go for the USB and ethernet port.

And this should just drop in there.

And there are...

It seems to fit... fairly snugly.

There we go. You can kind of feel it where it snaps in.

You want to make sure the connectors are all lined up with the holes and the connectors on the side actually fit into the holes on here so there's a bit of a snap feel to it.

Get the other screws.

These screws I'm going to need the spectacles for.

It'd be nice if this screw driver was magnetic but that one went in without too much difficulty.

On screws like this, I tend to start them, get them all started, and then I go through later and with a second pass tighten them down for good.

That way you don't... If you tighten it down one at a time, sometimes you'll knock things out of alignment and then it's harder to get the other screws in.

And for both sets of screws, they sent me one screw more than I actually needed. Which was convenient since I dropped of those on the floor. I'll have to go retrieve that later.

And then I can go through a second time and tighten everything down.

Again, you don't want to tighten it down too tight because you don't want to strip the threads or the head.

And this screwdriver seems to be possibly at end of days.

This one screw... No this one screw has some munged up threads.

The screwdriver is fine. The head is rounded out without putting any torque on that at all.

And I can't get it out so now I need to get the pliers.

Let's try the extra screw that they gave me.

Those are magnetized and it's making it hard to get the screw in.

Once you have threads in plastic you want to do a technique called indexing where you turn backwards until you feel a click and then you can go forwards again.

That way you're not cutting new threads into the plastic.

And this new new screw worked much better.

There we go.

So I think now we are ready to put the operating system SD card into the case.

There's a small slot right there on the back of the case that this should slide into just like so.

And yeah, it protrudes out so if that was in the card when we tried to put the card in here, we'd have problems getting it in. So that's definitely what's going on there.

Now we're ready to wire up the fan.

The fan goes in this way and there's two options on this.

The red wire is positive and the black wire is negative and the manual says which ones go where with some pretty detailed instructions.

There are two options on this fan. You can either run it at low speed on 3.3 volts or at high speed on 5 volts, both of which are available right here on the GPIO connector.

And the black one is ground and it's on pin 6 which it shows right there.

I'll orient this in the way it shows in the diagram. Pin 6 is the third one on the top. So it goes in there.

And then the red is either pin 1 for 3.3 volts or pin 2 for 5 volts.

So I'm going to put it on 5 volts because, hey, more power! Right?

And then everything should just snap together if I can figure out which way this goes on.

And there we have it. We're ready for power, keyboard and video.

Setup

So, we have the things that came with the kit and a few extra items in order to use this.

We need an external monitor. This is a small HDMI monitor that is designed for use with video equipment but any HDMI output source will work.

I also have a keyboard and mouse. Those are really the only things you need in addition to what comes in the kit.

For the purposes of today and this particular setup, I also have an HDMI splitter so that I can run the signal out of the Raspberry Pi, not only to the monitor, but also into my computer to be able to record it and capture it in high quality so that you can see what's going on in the video.

That complicates this particular setup but that's not a setup that you'd normally need when working with the Raspberry Pi.

One thing of note, is while the power supply that comes with a Pi looks like a normal wall wart, it is a high power device.

The Pi requires more than what most wall warts produce.

Most wall warts output in the milliamp to maybe 1.5 amp range.

The Pi needs more than that and this particular one that came with this kit is a 3000 milliamp, or 3 amp, power supply.

So, you do want to make sure that if you're not using a kit that you get a power supply that has sufficient output for the Pi's use.

If you don't have a power supply that has enough power, you'll get weird things happening.

It'll work sometimes and not others.

It will just work for awhile and then suddenly not work.

Just kind of bizarre things like that. So if you do have problems like that and you don't have a power supply that came with a kit, make sure that the output of the power supply is sufficient for the Raspberry Pi.

Let's start putting this together.

Everything's plugged in now, including the power supply into the wall.

I've got the software running on the computer to capture the screen.

I'm using OBS by the way just to record everything.

It's Open Broadcast Software I believe is what it's called and we're just using that as screen capture at this point off the HDMI input and the little converter thingy that I have.

Let's turn it on and see what happens.

First time startup

Down here in the corner I have overlaid a time code on the screen capture.

I'll be speeding up through parts of this so we don't have to wait during the entire video.

The time code will show the actual length of time it took in real life.

It takes a bit to start up and now we have a background with this welcome message.

I'm going to go ahead and hit Next and now we get a chance to setup our country, language and time zone.

I'll set mine for the United States and since I'm in Mountain Time, I'll select Boise.

Clicking Next it takes a couple seconds to set that and now we have the opportunity to set the password for the main account.

I'll put that in here what I want to use and click Next again.

Now it's asking about screen setup.

We can see around the outside edges here that we have a black border where the background screen doesn't take up the whole screen.

This has to do with different HDMI display devices and sometimes you'll see these bars and sometimes you won't.

Since we see them here, I'm going to click this check box and that should remove them in the future.

So now I'll click Next to save this.

And the next step is it's looking for wireless networks.

We can see a bunch from the neighborhood here so I'll scroll down here and select mine and it refreshes the list and now I have to select it again and hit Next.

And now it's asking for my wireless network password. I'll put that in and continue on.

And now it wants to update the software. I'm going to click Next and...

uh, oh. For some reason it didn't connect to the network. I'll have to look into that.

For now, we'll just move along. That's something that I can do in the future.

And I guess that's it for the setup wizard. It's going to reboot and let's see what happens.

OK. That didn't take too long.

Now we can see the whole screen is being used. We don't have the black borders, so that worked.

In the top right corner here we can see that we now have a network connection.

Now let's go look at the software installer.

I'll go over here to the menu and click on the Raspberry Pi icon to pull the menu down and then I'll go down here into Preferences.

Let's start with this Recommended software option.

It'll start off by checking for updates so it's going out to the network and seeing what's different between what's been released now and what the software was originally setup for.

Well that took about a minute. Now we can see all the menu items that are part of the recommended list for the Raspberry Pi ecosystem.

On the left we have different categories and when you select one it shows the items in that list.

You can check or uncheck the box on the far right to add or remove the options that you want installed on your particular Raspberry Pi.

After you have everything you want selected, click Apply and it'll start installing or removing as you've directed.

This may take a bit depending on what you've selected and the speed of your internet connection.

Fortunately it does a good job of telling you what it's doing with all the status messages and the progress bar.

After it's gone through and figured everything out, we get this completion dialog when it finishes.

If I hit Apply again, we'll see that nothing happens since it's all caught up.

So I hit Close to finish this step.

And so now if we look here in the menus, we can see that it installed the software that we asked for.

Now I want to make sure that the operating system is up to date.

To do that, I'm going to go to the terminal window and run a command.

"sudo apt update" will check for updates for everything that's installed on the Pi, both at the base operating system level as well as any additionally installed applications.

It takes a little bit, but generally not terribly long.

When it finishes, we get back to the command prompt.

All this has really done is update some internal lists so that it knows what needs to be updated. It hasn't actually done any updates.

To do the actual updates, I'm going to run the command "sudo apt full-upgrade".

This will compare what I have installed to the update list and tell me what needs to be changed.

I have the option to continue or not. Hitting return selects the default Yes answer that's indicated by the capital Y and off it goes.

This does take awhile. It's a two step process. First it has to download all the actual items that it needs to install and then it has to actually install them.

Again, it does provide good feedback while it's doing this but it may take some time depending on how much needs to be changed and the speed of your internet.

In this situation, it took between 7 and 8 minutes that I've sped up through here.

Now that the updating is all done, I want to see how much storage space I have available for future development.

I'm going to use the "df" command with the "-h" option.

On the first line it's showing that I have 3.1 gig used and 110 gig is available.

That's out of 128 gig SD card. So that'd not doing too bad.

There is some overhead for the operating system of course and things like that.

The update process downloaded a bunch of files that really aren't needed anymore.

To clean those up I'm going to use a "sudo apt clean" command. That doesn't take any time to run. It just returns immediately.

Running the "df -h" command again shows that now I have 3.0 gig used, freeing up about 100 megabytes. Not a whole lot, but every little bit counts.

Now I'm done setting this up and so we're going to use the exit command to close the terminal.

All told, that took around 19 minutes to do the initial setup and now the Raspberry Pi is ready to be used.

For now I'm going to shut it down by selecting Logout and then clicking Shutdown.

You always want to make sure you do this when you shutdown so that everything gets written out to the SD card properly.

Do you have a Raspberry Pi now? Or are you thinking about getting one? What are your plans for it? Leave a comment down below. I'd love to hear about it.

I'll see you over here in this video that YouTube thinks you're going to enjoy.

And when making things remember...
Perfection's not required.
Fun is!

Universal Mobile Base For Table Saw and other tools - Portamate PM-1100

Description

Imagine, what would shop life be like if you could easily move any tool around? In this episode of the House of Hacks, Harley opens, assembles and installs a universal mobile base for table saw. Used in this video is a Bora Portamate PM-1100 kit that is a DIY mobile base for power tools.

Portamate PM-1100 (Amazon affiliate link)

Here at House of Hacks we do tutorials, project overviews, tool reviews and more related to making things around the home and shop. Generally this involves wood and metal working, electronics, photography and other similar things. If this sounds interesting to you, you may subscribe here.

If you’re interested in learning more about the House of Hacks' values, here’s a playlist for you.

And here’s the most recent video.

For a written transcript, go to Universal Mobile Base For Table Saw and other tools - Portamate PM-1100

Music under Creative Commons License By Attribution 3.0 by Kevin MacLeod at http://incompetech.com.
Intro/Exit: "Hot Swing"
Incidental: "Riptide"

Transcript

Imagine, what would it be like if you could move your larger tools around the workshop?

How would a universal mobile base for your table saw or other tools change your workflow?

Would you have more flexibility for storage?

Would your shop be more space efficient?

Would your tools be easier to use for different sizes of materials?

Today at the House of Hacks we’re going to be looking at how to do this.

About 18 months ago, I went to my Dad’s to pick up some tools that had been my Granddad's. When I got back, I did a video of what I brought back with me and I'll leave a link up here in the cards.

Recently, I made another trip to pick up a few more things that had been left behind. Most notably was a larger table saw that had been my Granddad's and he'd built a base for it.

It's going to be a great upgrade to my current small one but it's much larger and won't fit in the workshop the way it's currently organized.

So I looked at what I needed and what I had and changed my approach to my shop's organization.

Previously, all my large tools were set and ready to use in fixed locations. This had the advantage of being quick to setup.

But it has two disadvantages. One is it takes more floor space because you have to dedicate room around the tool in order to work.

And two, you have less flexibility in your material handling in and out of the equipment.

In addition to the tools taking up floor space, I also had two 6' snap together utility shelves that contained various supplies and small bench tools.

I decided to change to a mobile layout where most of the large tools are on movable bases.

This will allow them to be stored closer together for more compact and efficient use of floor space and it'll give more flexibility for material handling.

This more efficient use of floor space will allow me to get the larger table saw in the workshop.

It does come at a cost though of more setup time.

To accomplish this, I did two things.

First, I split the two 6' shelf units into four 3' shelf units and then hung them from the ceiling.

This allows better space utilization closer to the ceiling and it frees up a lot of floor space.

Second, I converted a number of tools with fixed bases to have mobile bases.

This conversion is the topic of today's video.

But first, welcome to the House of Hacks.

If we're just meeting, I'm Harley and I make stuff out of wood, metal and sometimes other materials. And sometimes I talk about other workshop related topics.

Today, I'm going to be showing the assembly and use of the Portamate PM-1100 universal base kit.

On my previous trip to Dad's, I picked up a large saw with a base that Granddad had made.

I didn't have a permanent location for it, so for expedience, I picked up a mobile base with metal rails.

These metal rails have holes in them in fixed locations for adjustability, but because the holes are in fixed locations, you don't have infinite adjustability.

And so it didn't exactly quite fit the base that I already had. It ended up being about an inch larger than it really needed to be on both the width and length.

I looked around and found the Portamate PM-1100.

This is a hardware kit that has wheels and all the hardware to mount them to a piece of wood.

The piece of wood doesn't come with the kit. You'd make it whatever size you want.

So this allows me to have a base that's exactly the right size for the bases that I already have.

I'll leave an Amazon affiliate link in the description below.

With this design, there's two corners that are designed for the back of the equipment that only roll in one direction.

And there's two corners that are designed for the front with castors that allow you to change direction as you're rolling it around.

The castors are also designed with levers on them so they're up when you're using the tool and it won't roll around and you can push them down, the wheels drop down, lifts the tool off the ground and you can move it.

You supply a piece of wood to connect them at the desired size.

Plywood is usually best for strength purposes.

When I originally bought them, I was planning on just attaching them to the preexisting bases without using any plywood.

However, when I actually got them and tried putting them on, I realized there were toe kicks on the bases that interfered with the hardware raising and lowering mechanism.

So in order to put them where that would work, there wasn't enough material left to attach them to so I ended up going with the plywood anyway.

I cut some plywood left over from previous projects to the desired size, added the hardware to it and attached those assemblies to the bases.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Let's take a look at what's in the box and how to assemble them.

In the box are two bright orange pieces that are the levers for the cam activation and two plates to mount the castors to.

There are also four corner pieces and wheels.

Two corner pieces are designed for the rear wheels and two are for the front wheels.

There are also four flat plates that are designed to sandwich plywood between them and the corner pieces to provide extra support.

And all the needed screws, nuts and bushings are in a little baggie.

The rear wheel assembly is straightforward.

Using the appropriate bolt, put it through the axel hole from the inside of the base.

Place a bushing on it, the wheel, another bushing and then a nyloc nut on the outside.

Putting the second bushing on is a bit tricky due to the limited space but holding the wheel flat keeps gravity from working against you.

The front wheel assembly has a few more parts.

First put in the foot rest.

This is what will rest on the floor when the wheel is in the up position, keeping the tool from moving around.

It just screws into pre-threaded holes in the corner piece and is secured with a jam nut once the height is set as desired.

Then put a carriage bolt through the top square hole.

Put a bushing on the bolt followed by the orange piece, flat side up, followed by another bushing and pushed through the other side of the support.

A split lock washer goes on followed by a standard nut.

Put another carriage bolt through the other square hole and then the grey plate.

Note that the plate comes pre-lubricated with some grease.

Be sure to put the grease side towards the orange plate and don’t get it on you.

Push the screw through the assembly followed by another split lock washer and nut.

Finally, the castor can be put through the grey plate and secured with its nut.

This nut has a flanged surface that acts as a lock nut and goes toward the plate.

Next measure your tool base to determine how big you need to make your plywood and cut it to size.

The hardware is designed to work with either 1/2” or 3/4” plywood and comes with different length screws for each application.

Depending on the thickness you use, you’ll have screws left over intended for the other thickness.

With the plywood cut to the correct size, place the wheel assemblies on each corner and mark the hole positions.

Then drill the holes.

I used a drill press but you could use a hand held drill.

Just be sure to get them as straight as you can since there’s another metal piece that needs to match up on the other side.

There is some room for play, so it doesn’t have to have super tight tolerances.

But the closer you can get it, the easier it’ll be to get everything lined up.

Once all the holes are made, it’s time to attach the corner assemblies.

Put the corner piece with the wheel in place, put a flat triangle piece on top with the countersink side up and attach them with the appropriate screws.

Note that the bottom piece has a pre-tapped hole so no nuts are required for this operation.

Get all the screws started first, then make sure the corner assembly is tight to the wood before tightening the screws down.

Repeat this process for all four corners and the base is ready to attach to your tool.

How this is done will vary, depending on your tool.

In my case, I just used grabber screws to attach from the bottom of the plywood up into the bottom of the tool’s case.

My Granddad used 2x4 construction for the base’s frame, so there was plenty of wood to attach to.

You’ll have to figure out the best means of attaching this for your situation and provide your own hardware.

Once it’s attached, all that’s left to do is adjust the rubber feet on the front.

You want to adjust them so they support the weight of the equipment when the wheels are in the up position but are lifted off the ground when the wheels are in the down position.

Once in the desired position, tighten the jam nut so they will stay in place.

And, they’re ready to use.

I’ll see you in this playlist of other shop organization ideas.

And when making things, remember…

Perfection's not required. Fun is!

How to replace intermittent connectors

Description

Sometimes plugs fail. Today at the House of Hacks we tear down a Better Life Devices BLD T250 transdermal stimulator to change the plugs from unreliable barrel connectors to more reliable 1/8" audio connectors. The general process can be used for any type of small device.

Referenced video: How to desolder electronics

For a written transcript, go to How to replace intermittent connectors.

Music under Creative Commons License By Attribution 3.0.
Intro/Exit: "Hot Swing" by Kevin MacLeod at http://incompetech.com
Incidental: "Dispersion Relation" by Kevin MacLeod at http://incompetech.com

Transcript

This medical device is going to get an upgrade today at the House of Hacks.

My wife has chronic back issues and the other week had a big flair up. The chiropractor showed us a home electronic stimulation unit that he was willing to sell us at a very steep discount because he wasn't terribly impressed with their reliability. He said they worked fine as long as they worked but reported they had a tendency to develop intermittent faults and then fail altogether.

As I looked it over, before buying it, I noted the connectors on the side. A similar design used to be standard for photography flashes and is a well known failure point. I guessed that this was probably the problem but, if it wasn't, figured it would be easy enough to figure out what was.

So we went ahead and bought it, knowing I would probably have to fix it at some point.

Sure enough, after about two weeks of use it started working intermittently. In this episode, I'll show how I upgraded this with a more reliable solution.

At the local electronics store I got a couple 1/8" audio extension cords. The plan was to cut the ends off and put one end in the device coming out as a pigtail and splice the other end onto the wires for the pads.

But first I need to open the unit. I start by sliding this cover off, taking off the two knobs with a gentle pull, they're just press fit on, and removing the battery. It's a good idea to make sure the power is disconnected before doing any sort of repair on electric devices.

Next is to open it up. This took me a little bit to figure out as there are a couple hidden screws. The first one is under this label. Fortunately the label is made out of thick plastic and held down with some sticky but removable adhesive, so it peels off without too much trouble. Once off, a philips head screw is revealed.

There's another screw on the back under this belt clip. One side of this clip has a slot designed to slide a screw driver into. Lift up with a fair mount of pressure to pop off the clip. And there's the second screw.

Finally there are two plastic clips accessed through the battery cover. Pulling the two parts of the case apart at the bottom causes those clips to pop apart and the case finally separates.

The circuit board simply rests in place. To remove it, the LEDs may have to be slid out of the holes in the case before lifting the board out.

And that completes the disassembly.

These are the original cables with their problematic ends. They plug into these connectors on the board.

These will be replaced with the ends from this audio cable. I'll cut the ends off the cable and replace the connectors on the board with the female audio connector and splice on the male audio connector onto the end of the electrode cable. This will result in a much more reliable connection.

To remove the connectors, I'm just going to use a bit of desolder braid to remove the solder. Once the solder's removed, the connectors just drop out of the holes.

This is a cheap brand of audio cable that I've had about 50% failure rate with. So before doing anything to this cable, I'm testing it with a simple continuity check. I make sure I don't have any shorts between the tip and ring and that I do have continuity between the tip on both ends and the ring on both ends.

Now that the cable checks out, I'm just going to cut off the ends. Then using some wire strippers I'll carefully remove the insulation. With audio cables, the outside conductor is wrapped around the inside one. So after taking off the outside insulation, the wires first need to be gathered together and twisted. Then the insulation can be taken off the inside conductor.

And then the other end gets the same treatment.

With the connectors exposed and twisted together, now I'll tin the ends. This makes it much easier to solder when things are put together.

Now the wires just go in the holes the old connectors came out of. For this particular application, it doesn't matter which wire goes in which hole. For other types of devices, the outside ring should match up to the outside ring on the original.

A little solder finishes the connection and then the excess wire can be trimmed off.

That finishes the electrical side. Now a dab of hot glue makes a mechanical connection to act as a strain relief so there's no undue stress on the solder joint.

Now to modify the cables that plug into the device.

Cut off the original ends and split the two wires down the center. Expose the wire with some wire strippers, twist the wire together, add a bit of heat shrink tubing on the wires, add some tinning to the wires and solder the new ends onto the old wires.

Generally, I like to make a mechanical connection before soldering, but this particular wire was too brittle to bend well so I used the solder as both a mechanical and electrical connection.

Finally slide the heat shrink over the connectors and heat it up to shrink it around the connection. In total there were three pieces of heat shrink tubing for each cable: one for each of the wires and a larger one around the whole thing.

And now it's time to reassemble the device. This is just the opposite of taking it apart. Drop the circuit board into one side of the box, sliding the battery connectors into place. The other side goes back on top with the new connectors coming out of the original holes. The screws go back in. The label is replaced and then the knobs slide back onto the controls. Finally, the battery can be placed in. Before the clip goes back on, I'm going to test it. Yeah, nothing like testing it on yourself. As I turn up the intensity I can feel it working. Success!

A side effect of using these connectors is they act as a strain-relief, break-away connection. If the control unit somehow has forced applied to it, like it drops out of a pocket, it simply comes apart at the new connectors rather than putting a lot of force on the wire/connector/PCB system like the original connectors did.

Finally, I'm thinking about making a DIY version of this device. If you'd be interested in seeing a video about this, let me know in the comments.

Thanks for watching and until next time, go make something, it doesn't have to be perfect, just have fun!