Replacing the old battery on rechargeable bike lights

更换可充电自行车灯的旧电池

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. 你好！最近我需要给自行车配车灯。我突然想起十年前买过一套可充电车灯，但已经很久没用了。我试着给它们充电，但充满电后，它们只亮了大约 5 分钟就又熄灭了。

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. 我对电子产品了解不多，但我一直很好奇是否能修复旧电子设备。这看起来是一个完美的维修项目，因为我可能只需要更换电池。于是，我去了我所在的当地酷儿创客空间（queer makerspace），使用那里的电烙铁尝试进行维修！我对电子产品知之甚少，这篇文章也不包含任何安全建议，因为我本身也不太懂安全规范。我觉得在社区空间里做项目很棒，因为在那里你可以获得帮助。

step 1: cut it open

第一步：切开外壳

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. 车灯外壳摸起来像是硅胶做的，所以我沿着看起来像接缝的地方随意地切开了硅胶。过程中我确实撕坏了一些硅胶，弄得一团糟，但我还是成功打开了它并找到了电路板。我不知道这些车灯的具体型号，但文章末尾有它们的照片。

step 2: remove the screws

第二步：拆卸螺丝

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. 有一些螺丝将部件固定在一起，所以我把它们拆了下来，以便取出电路板。我尽量少拆螺丝，因为担心弄丢或者之后装不回去。我大概把螺丝放进了一个袋子里。

step 3: get the circuit board out

第三步：取出电路板

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. Here’s what the battery looked like: 我取出了电路板。它的样子如下：你可以看到电池连接的位置，我想是在 RI3 的左侧和 Q2 的上方。电池的样子如下：

step 4: desolder the battery

第四步：拆焊电池

I’d never desoldered anything before, so I found the iFixit guide to desoldering and read it. Also I asked my friends Lee and Lauria for advice. Here were the steps I ended up following based on the guide & the advice I got: Use a desoldering pump to remove most of the solder. Once most of it is gone, kind of pull them apart to try to separate them. Also try to avoid getting the battery too hot in the process by taking breaks to let it cool down. I’m not very good with a soldering iron so it took a while. The battery has an attachment that is welded to the top. For a while I thought I needed to remove this and it seemed impossible, but it turned out the replacement battery comes with that part so actually I was supposed to leave it alone. 我以前从未拆焊过任何东西，所以我找到了 iFixit 的拆焊指南并阅读了它。我还向我的朋友 Lee 和 Lauria 寻求了建议。根据指南和建议，我最终遵循了以下步骤：使用吸锡器去除大部分焊料。一旦大部分焊料被清除，就尝试将它们拉开以实现分离。此外，在过程中要尽量避免电池过热，通过休息让它冷却。我不擅长使用电烙铁，所以花了不少时间。电池顶部焊接有一个附件。有一段时间我以为我需要拆掉它，这看起来是不可能的，但后来发现替换电池自带那个部件，所以实际上我根本不需要动它。

step 5: identify the battery

第五步：识别电池型号

In the picture of the battery in Step 3, you can see it says something like “3” and “LI???77”. There’s a piece of metal that I think is welded or something to the top of the battery. It seemed impossible and also maybe not smart to try to remove so I wasn’t sure how to find out what an “LI????77” was or how to order another one. I’ve been trying to avoid using LLMs (though I will not get into that because I am exhausted by LLM discourse and I’m sure you are too), but I really had no idea how to figure out what the battery was so I asked an LLM. It gave the response “LIR2477”, which (when I looked it up) looked exactly the same as my battery so I figured that was plausible. I would be interested to learn non-LLM ways to figure this out though. There must be a way. Lauria showed me how to use DigiKey’s search which was very cool though DigiKey didn’t have that part. 在第三步的电池照片中，你可以看到上面写着类似“3”和“LI???77”的字样。电池顶部有一块金属片，我想是焊接上去的。尝试拆除它似乎是不可能的，而且可能也不明智，所以我不知道该如何确定“LI????77”到底是什么，也不知道该如何订购新的。我一直尽量避免使用大语言模型（LLM）（虽然我不想深入讨论这个，因为我已经厌倦了关于 LLM 的争论，我相信你也一样），但我实在不知道该如何查明电池型号，所以还是问了 LLM。它给出的回答是“LIR2477”，（我查了一下）看起来和我的电池一模一样，所以我认为这个型号是可信的。不过，我很想学习非 LLM 的方法来解决这个问题，肯定有其他办法。Lauria 向我展示了如何使用 DigiKey 的搜索功能，这非常酷，尽管 DigiKey 那里没有那个零件。

step 6: buy the battery

第六步：购买电池

I went to AliExpress and ordered: 2 batteries (I had 2 bike lights and I wanted to fix them both), some silicone glue to glue things back together. I think the batteries were $3 each and the glue was $8. 我去了全球速卖通（AliExpress）订购了：2 块电池（我有两个车灯，想把它们都修好），以及一些用于粘合外壳的硅胶胶水。电池大概是 3 美元一个，胶水是 8 美元。

step 7: solder the new batteries in and glue it back together

第七步：焊接新电池并粘合外壳

The parts took maybe 2 weeks to arrive, and once they arrived, I went back to the makerspace and: soldered in the new batteries, put the screws back in. The screws were very small and hard to hold, so at this point I dropped some screws on the ground and couldn’t find them because they were too small. So I just used fewer screws and hoped for the best. Used the glue to try to put everything back together. Make a somewhat halfhearted attempt to clamp the parts I was gluing together. Then after waiting some amount of time for the glue to dry I took it home and waited 24 hours for the glue to cure. Also I took the old batteries to somewhere nearby that accepts old batteries. 零件大概花了 2 周时间才到货。到货后，我回到创客空间：焊上了新电池，装回了螺丝。螺丝非常小，很难拿住，所以我中途掉了一些在地上，因为太小了根本找不到。所以我只能少装几颗螺丝，祈祷没问题。用胶水尝试把所有东西粘回去。勉强对粘合的部件进行了一些固定。等待胶水干燥一段时间后，我把它带回家，又等了 24 小时让胶水完全固化。此外，我把旧电池送到了附近回收旧电池的地方。

it works!

成功了！

The lights work! I have used them to bike at night! I still haven’t needed to recharge them (and tragically I had to order a new Mini USB cable because I got rid of all my Mini USB cables, so I’m still waiting for that), so I still don’t know for sure how long the lifetime of the new battery will be. Here’s what the light looks like after re-gluing. You can see that I didn’t glue very carefully. It didn’t really go back together that well but I’m hoping it’ll be good enough. I thought it was really cool that I was able to do this with extremely minimal electronics skills! It cost about $20 CAD to buy the parts, and (whether or not the repair holds up, I’ll try to update this post in the future!), it was fun to try to repair something and learn something new. 车灯亮了！我已经用它们在晚上骑过车了！我还没需要给它们充电（悲剧的是，我不得不订购一根新的 Mini USB 线，因为我之前把所有的 Mini USB 线都扔了，所以我还在等线），所以我还不确定新电池的寿命到底有多长。这是重新粘合后的车灯样子。你可以看出我粘得不太仔细。它确实没能完美复原，但我希望这样已经足够好了。我觉得能用极少的电子技术知识做到这一点真的很酷！购买零件大约花了 20 加元，（无论这次维修能维持多久，我以后都会尝试更新这篇文章！），尝试修理东西并学习新知识的过程非常有趣。