#Philips gogear mp3 player amazon install
#Philips gogear mp3 player amazon Patch

My friend Eric Schlaepfer taught me the joy of zombie electronics-that when you see if what you just took apart still works while in pieces (Fig. With the guts dangling, the player still works as a flash memory, despite the charging system not functioning.

#Philips gogear mp3 player amazon install

Great stuff, but that required a little chromed plastic slide that has to be assembled into the case, and then you have to ensure it lines up as you install the PCB.ĩ.

That way you can’t accidentally press any of them when the unit is in your pocket. Instead of holding down some button for three seconds, you just slide the switch and all the pushbuttons stop working. The product did have one feature I loved-a physical “hold” switch. The sliding USB plug and expensive board-to-board connector make this design costly to build. Spending all this money on expensive components and complex assembly just doesn’t make any sense.Ĩ. It was obvious in 2007 that MP3 players would only get smaller, cheaper, and have much more memory in a few years. This isn’t some product with a 20-year design life. A case like this requires tooling with slides, and the chroming of the plastic is another expensive step. The plastic case is also a complex and expensive injection molding (Fig. The headphone jack is mounted on a small mezzanine PCB. This is usually a sign of sending in industrial designers and stylists with no concept of high-volume, low-cost consumer product design.ħ. It adds to assembly cost and makes testing more difficult. That board connects to the main PCB with an expensive board-to-board connector. The buttons operate side-mounted tact switches on the main PCB.Īdding to an already expensive design, the headphone jack was mounted on a small mezzanine PCB held on with a screw (Fig. The expense of the switches was compounded by the expense of the gold-immersion PCB and sliding USB plug.Ħ. Using discrete purchased tact switches is far preferable to “rolling your own” like the engineers did with the Trek Sensor bicycle speedometer. 6) were a small plastic injection molding that operated tactile switches mounted to the main PCB (printed circuit board). The cell is a “smart” battery it has active electronics to monitor and control the charge and discharge.

#Philips gogear mp3 player amazon Patch

The Li-ion battery cell has a braided metal patch for RFI interference.ĥ. That and the Kapton tape assembly makes the whole battery needlessly expensive.Ĥ. The battery cell itself seemed complex and expensive since it had chips and components to control and monitor its charging and discharging (Fig. There was a little braided patch on the battery to make an RF connection to the battery cell (Fig. The plastic case must not have been carbon- or metal-filled for RFI (radio-frequency interference). The cover seems redundant since it covers more chromed plastic. Appearance was more important than function to the design team.ģ.

It seems like a waste of money to glue a brushed plastic cover over a chromed plastic frame. The cover just hides more chromed plastic (Fig. The flash memory still worked fine after all these years. The prismatic Li-ion cell is not a common size. The failure of my unit was it would not accept or hold a charge.

It makes service difficult, and you’re always afraid of breaking things. The first problem is that the unit is glued together (Fig.