Hi everyone!
Pre-ramble
I’ve been a little more into the DIY space recently and I just got my hands on my first soldering iron (the ones I’d used previously were because I had access to a workshop a while ago). I’m definitely pretty new to soldering and all but I thought I’d share some of my experiences with doing this little repair+upgrade to get me back into the swing of things.
What I actually did
The device I’m working on is my old Vivis Knight V3 (seen below on the left), it came with a micro-USB connector soldered onto the Battery Management System (the two blue points).
The original connector broke a few months ago so I ripped it out and just used the USB-A port. I laid it out in a well ventialted area, grabbed a decapitated USB-C connector (from something that broke I can’t even remember), slapped on some nitrile gloves and got to work with some solder.
Obviously I checked the USB-C wire colouring and to my extreme surprise it looked like they followed some kind of standard and I found an image online that had matching colours so I matched things up, ignored the data wires and stripped the +/- power lines.
After far too much time I was left with a theoretically working USB-C capable powerbank.
Mistakes were made
It was only after I finished the soldering and sat down to have a closer look I noticed that I’d been far too aggressive with my wire stripping and probably would have shorted or damaged something if I’d actually tested it then and there. That would have been pain.
Well after that I slapped some electrical tape on (I didn’t have any heat shrink), tested it and sealed up the powerbank until sometime I need to fix it up again I guess.
Below are the last trio of my images.
All done
Happy with the outcome, could have been better but hey, it works so far and I know next time will be a little better. Hope you enjyed the… Longer than I thought read!