Tag: sound

Bagpuss, oh, Bagpuss, oh, flat battery cat puss…

A much loved soft toy gets new (apparently non-replaceable) batteries…

For a change, this one’s just for me. I don’t often write-up repairs on my own items, but I couldn’t resist dedicating a few words to our beloved Bagpuss soft toy. He’s been around in the family for a good few years and when my youngest daughter decided to dust him down and make his voice work, I wasn’t surprised when no noise came out. Our Bagpuss has an electronic voice box which is activated with a gentle squeeze around the belly. After many years and many hugs, the batteries had gone kaput.

I grew up in the 1980s and remember watching Bagpuss on BBC1. I must have been about four I guess. Bagpuss lived in a shop window, a shop that was owned by a child, a shop that didn’t sell anything. Emily, the shop owner, would bring Bagpuss and friends broken objects to restore and explore. The story would begin once Emily had left and Bagpuss woke up…

Well, this Bagpuss wasn’t waking up anytime soon and to make matters worse, the batteries within appeared to be non-replaceable. Well, that’s not very good is it? So, in the spirit of the original TV program, I decided to take an unpicker tool to the cat and carefully dismantle his seams…See how I get on.

Make and model: Bagpuss talking toy

Fault reported: No talking, no sound

Cost of replacement machine: £10.00 if you can find one

Manufacturer support (in the UK): 0/10

Cost of parts (for this repair): £1.00

My time spent on the repair: 1 hour

Tools needed: Needle and thread, small flat screwdriver

Sundry items: None

Cleaning materials: Contact cleaner

Repair difficulty: 2/10

Beverages: 1 tea (as usual)

Biscuits consumed: No biscuits, just a slice of chocolate cake (I think)

There’s always that moment with a fix like this when you think; shall I just leave it as it is? I mean, it was still a loved toy right? But as my regular reader will know, that’s not quite how we do things in the workshop. Things must work correctly and if there’s a reasonable chance of success, then the repair must go on.

So, here it goes.

I knew that this Bagpuss ran on batteries, but had no battery compartment to gain access etc. He’s a soft toy, made from a mixture of polyester and cotton fabric, which is all neatly stitched together. All I could do is roughly locate the sound box within his chest and neck area and then chose a suitable seam to unpick, in the hope that it would allow me some access to the box without causing too much damage.

Using a standard stitch un-picker tool, I was able to gently cut into the neck and part of the chest area which gave me access to a small red and black smooth polyester bag, which contained the voice box. At this point, I was starting to feel a bit sick, I mean, what had I done!?

Moving on, the voice box just slide out of the red and black bag and from then on in, it was standard toy-fare. The plastic voice box had a switch on one side and a battery compartment on the other side, all perfectly normal. The battery door was held in place with a small screw and once removed, revealed three LR41 coin cell batteries. Very normal stuff, nothing non-replaceable here.

Luckily, I had some spare batteries in stock and with a little contact cleaner applied to the slightly tarnished battery contacts and the new cells fitted, Bagpuss’ voice was heard for the first time in ages.

  • FixItWorkshop, Worthing, February’21, Bagpuss, voice box in bag.
  • FixItWorkshop, Worthing, February’21, Bagpuss, removing voice box.
  • FixItWorkshop, Worthing, February’21, Bagpuss, removing voice box…
  • FixItWorkshop, Worthing, February’21, Bagpuss, voice box removed.
  • FixItWorkshop, Worthing, February’21, Bagpuss, removing batteries.
  • FixItWorkshop, Worthing, February’21, Bagpuss, contact cleaner applied to contacts.
  • FixItWorkshop, Worthing, February’21, Bagpuss, parts laid out.
  • FixItWorkshop, Worthing, February’21, Bagpuss, more surgery.
  • FixItWorkshop, Worthing, February’21, Bagpuss, re-stitching.
  • FixItWorkshop, Worthing, February’21, Bagpuss, looking good. What’s new pussycat?

Now it was just a case of putting the voice box back in the right place, so that the switch to make the sound work could be reached easily. Once that was done, it was just a case of carefully re-stitching the neck and chest bag together using white cotton thread and lots of neat tack-stitches that would be invisible, once tight.

After a few minutes of finger-pricking sewing, Bagpuss’ head was back on and it was time for a squeeze…

See what you think.

When a label or someone tells you that a battery cannot be replaced, ignore it and try anyway.

Once Bagpuss was back together, I couldn’t help but wonder why the manufacturer hadn’t fitted a hidden zip to allow simpler battery replacement. Perhaps it’s got something to do with safety standards. Who knows. What I do know is that Bagpuss isn’t alone, and I suspect that many toys like this are discarded needlessly each year due to short-term, lazy design.

Make it so, number one

A Star Trek Next Generation themed money box gets a light restoration

IMG_20200617_221628
FixItWorkshop, Worthing, August’20, Star Trek money box.

Some things are just cool.  I mean look, if this money box doesn’t encourage prudent saving behaviour, then quite frankly, nothing will.

Spoiler alert:  Put money in, some of the Star Trek crew (Next Generation) light up, followed by speech and cool sound effects.  What’s not to like.  Pressing the Star Trek (Starfleet) button, simulates the effects too. What fun.

This money box had once been cherished by its owner, but had been left in the attic for a number of years, with the original batteries still fitted.  As anyone who’s done this before will know, old batteries leak in time.  If you’re lucky and catch the ensuing corrosion in time, you might get away with just battery removal and a light clean up. If you leave it long enough, like the owner of this toy had, you’ll end up with a lot of rusty mess and no chance of life (Jim, but not as we know it). Remember, take batteries out before putting your toys away, long term.

Make and model: Star Trek money box (make unknown)

Fault reported: Not working/ battery compartment heavily corroded

Cost of replacement: £ Irreplaceable

Manufacturer support:  0/10

Cost of parts: £4.00

Hours spent on repair: 1.5 hours

Tools needed: Screwdrivers, test meter, heat shrink, soldering iron etc

Sundry items: Cleaning materials, paint, contact cleaner

Repair difficulty: 3/10

Cups of tea: 1

Biscuits: none (1 jammy donut, slightly warmed, as they should be)

 

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When I get an item like this, I tend to spend a bit of time researching it online, to see who knows anything about it.  It turns out, that this money box isn’t that well represented and after a few Google searches, I simply gave up and got on with the repair.

Parts for something like this are not available from the manufacturer, even if they are still around.  Presented with a situation like this, the only thing that can be done is to see if other parts can be bought off the shelf from component suppliers and be made to fit.  One simply has to be creative.

Good old eBay came up with the goods.  AA and C type battery terminals were available in single and double terminal variants and I ordered a couple of packs from a Chinese supplier, who delivered the bits I needed, within a week.  These things are reasonably cheap, so I ordered a pack, just in case I ruined a few, practicing first.

Just a few small screws hold the casing together and after de-soldering the wires going from the battery compartments to the main circuit, I was ready to start.  With battery corrosion as severe as this, all you can do is soak the parts in something like WD40 and attack the rusted parts with a small screwdriver and knife, taking time to avoid damaging the (aged) plastic casing..

After an hour, I’d removed 99% of the mess and fitted the new terminals.  The AA terminals went in OK, but the C type ones needed adapting with some metal I had lying about in the workshop.  A quick re-attachment of the wiring,  a quick clean with brake cleaner to de-grease and then touch up with some satin black paint and one would never know that batteries had ever wreaked such havoc.

Sometimes, I want to hang on to some of the things I repair.  This was one such item, but alas, I had to give it back.

Time for a brew.

Non-starter: Pure Evoke H2 DAB radio

My own radio gets the workshop treatment.

Who wouldn’t love a new DAB radio for your birthday?  Well, that’s what I had this year and I was thrilled to receive this Pure Evoke H2.  After choosing a suitable location on my desk, I quickly unpacked it, plugged it in and…nothing.  Booooooo!

The display backlight appeared to glow a little, but that was it and I was missing Today on Radio 4.

IMG_7657
FixItWorkshop, Worthing, November’18, Pure Evoke H2 DAB radio.

To save a quite frankly dull story, the returns and replacement process offered by the company who supplied the radio was hopeless.  But, after 2 months, I ended up with a replacement radio, in addition to the one I already had.  The second radio worked, albeit with some fettling required to the speaker to make it sound ok (another story).

Time to dig out the screw drivers as I had nothing to lose.

Just 6 screws hold the back on and with these removed, the radio’s innards were exposed.  Now, I’ve made radios from kits in the past using components I can hold with my fingers, but with this radio, the circuitry was teeny-weeny and I would have to have some luck to fix it.

I was in luck.  The radio is made up like a sandwich.  The front fascia is screwed to the cabinet and the back, that I’d removed, was screwed to the cabinet, from the other side.  There are data-style cables between the two halves and one of them appeared to be loose.  I carefully pushed the connector ‘home’ and then re-applied the power lead and wouldn’t you know it, the display lit up and it burst in to life.  Now we’re talking.

Thinking I’d sussed it out, I screwed the radio back together and had about a week or two of unbroken service, until the screen froze and then nothing. Oh no.

Re-opening the back of the radio, I suspected that the tiny soldered pins on the back of the multi-way connectors on the data-style cables, had been dislodged.  I have average sized hands for a bloke, but I needed tweezers to get the connectors on during assembly.  I wonder how much it would have cost to add an inch or so to each cable, to make manufacture easy.  As a consumer, I would have gladly paid the extra penny.  I suspected that this is how the original fault came to be as it wouldn’t have taken much more than a shove in the wrong direction to break the delicate connectors, due to the short length of the internal cables.

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Since this circuit board is a tiny stamped component affair, I had to be quick and neat with my re-soldering.  Each pin to PCB connector re-soldered, cables re-attached, back screwed back on and the radio worked once more.

Pure have a reputation for easy to use, excellent sounding products.  It’s just a shame they have seemingly penny-pinched on some of the internal gubbins on this model.  If yours develops similar symptoms, don’t give up, take the back off and have a look.

Cost of a new radio:  £40-90.  Cost of repair:  5 mins tinker time, one cup of tea.

V-Tech Splash & Sing baby bath book

This toy wasn’t singing at its best…

My daughter was kindly given a V-Tech Splash & Sing baby book and always enjoyed singing along to the music it made.  It’s a splash-proof book which is suitable for bath time play, but not necessarily for complete submersion at 100 metres!

IMG_4383
FixItWorkshop, Sep’17, V-Tech Splash & Sing baby bath time book.

It’s a battery operated toy and has an on/off switch and volume control on the front.  If the middle page of the book is squeezed in a couple of places, there are small switch buttons inside the book page itself, the corresponding the tune changes, relating to the picture on the page- I hope that makes sense.

The tunes on this book stopped changing with button presses and it became annoying to here the same tune constantly being played at bath time.  Very annoying.

The casing is held together with a few Pozi-head screws and after a bit of wriggling, the pages came free from the spine (the bit with the batteries and on/off switch).

Upon testing, the wires between the pages and the spine had broken internally and no longer connected to the corresponding page buttons.  They’d probably broken as the pages were turned over a good few uses.

FixItWorkshop, Sep’17, V-Tech Splash & Sing baby bath time book, buttons.
FixItWorkshop, Sep’17, V-Tech Splash & Sing baby bath time book,wire repair.
FixItWorkshop, Sep’17, V-Tech Splash & Sing baby bath time book, wire at spine.
FixItWorkshop, Sep’17, V-Tech Splash & Sing baby bath time book.
FixItWorkshop, Sep’17, V-Tech Splash & Sing baby bath time book, opening up page.

This toy is definitely not designed to be repaired.  The only way to get to the wiring was to cut open the page, cut out the damaged wiring and replace it with something a bit tougher.  The previous wiring was very flimsy and it would only be a matter of time before it broke, too soon.

I decided to use some thin gauge speaker cable, the sort you find in cheap portable radios for the repair.  This worked really well and after some careful soldering and gluing of the cut-open page, the toy was ready for reassembly.

This repair probably wouldn’t cost in, in the real world, but I hate extreme built-in obsolescence and this toy showed examples of it.

Cost of the toy, circa £14.00.  Cost of repair; my time plus some old wire I had lying about.