Broken Power Button on Crazyflie

[mgooch]

Hello support team,

This may be a simple fix, but I want to confirm before I attempt to fix it. I was flying the Crazyflie the other day and some how manage to hit something that broke off the power button. I can still plug it in via usb and it powers up and can connect to the client. Once I unplug it, it looses connection and powers off. I ensured that the motors still work when I had the crazyflie plugged into usb and connected to the client.

Here is the damage .

broken power switch

2014-06-20 10.06.39.jpg (74.57 KiB) Viewed 9803 times

Can I simply re solder a switch? If so, which pins below the switch need to be desoldered?

Do I need to also modify something on the software side too(firmware)? I have the Bitcraze VM 0.5.

[mgooch]

I reviewed some of the other posts and the parts can be found here:

http://wiki.bitcraze.se/projects:crazyf ... spareparts

So now how can safely remove the broken switch and resolder a new one?

[tobias]

Yes you can simply replace the push button. Easiest is if you have two soldering irons so you can heat up both sides at the same time. Else you will have to be quick with the soldering iron to be able to heat up both sides. Another option is to cut away the broken push button so that it is enough to heat up one of the pads to remove that.

The push button is actually just shorting to ground so it is possible to use something else to short it to ground.

[mgooch]

Wonderful. Thanks for the quick response. I should be getting the spare power buttons this week. Ill let you know how things go. Thanks again for your help tobias.

[mgooch]

So I got my spare power switches and re soldered one on there. When I sodered off one of the sides, the whole metal piece came out (pretty sure I needed a smaller tip for better contact ). It exposed the black board so there was only one metal piece to soder to. I doubt I am getting good contact for the power switch to actually function like it did originally because it still behaves the same. Everything works fine until I unplug the CF from the usb. The whole board looses power and the power switch does not turn it back on. The client indicates the battery is full, so is there another alternative to fixing this?

I was eventually going to mount a FPV camera too this, so any solution would have to factor that in as a future addition. I'm pretty new to the CF so if you could offer detailed alternative solutions that would be much appreciated. I'd prefer to not have a random power button elsewhere, but I guess I'll do what I gotta do.

Found all the schematics here: http://wiki.bitcraze.se/projects:crazyf ... schematics

Can a power switch be soldered to P8 in the component_placement_top_annotated.pdf to solve this issue?

[tobias]

Which one of the pads came loose? It should be possible to patch it with an external wire and maybe glue the switch in place. I have attached a picture of the top layout. The light red trace is the trace that turns on/off the CF when grounded.

[mgooch]

The OFF pad came off when I tried the previous described method. I don't know if it also ripped up the metal wire leading from n-000091 to the 1 n-000091.

Here is a pic:

Possible broken lead from 1 to 2

Do I need to also solder a wire in this little canal it created to make proper contact to this newly created pad? Is there a specific glue I should use? Thanks again for your help tobias.

[tobias]

It looks like it also ripped up the wire but that shouldn't be a big problem. I would start by soldering the push button to the pad that is left. Then solder a small wire (you could take a piece of the motor wires) from from 1 n-000091 to the push button. Lastly try to glue it. This can be tricky though as you don't want to get any glue into the mechanics of the push button. A liquid superglue (CA) would probably work well.

[mgooch]

I tried to solder it and no go. I also tried to glue it and no go. I am this bad at soldering? This seems like a trivial fix.

Here is the CF in current state:

FML solder fail

(The pic is a little miss leading, but I did solder it to 1 n-000091. Also I'm using the smallest solder tip I have atm.)

[tobias]

It looks like you bridged two of the legs on the IC. If you have any flux, that will help with making nice solder joints. If you can fix that bridge I'm positive it will work.