Chosen Solution
House of Marley Get-Together Mini Bluetooth speaker (Model EM-JA013) has had Micro USB port replaced twice already. I’m not that good at soldering, so the first time I replaced it for the owner one of the pads was peeled off a bit. I did everything I could to reconstitute the pad and, yay, it powered on and worked…for a while. The owner is an aggressive plugger. The owner, a friend of mine, bought a new one and gave me the old one. I managed, just barely, to attach yet another new micro-USB to the power supply board and it worked yet again…for a while. Despite being very careful, the USB port again came loose and somehow got damaged beyond use. I”m NOT an agressive plugger. Tried to get a new power-supply from the company, including offering to pay for the board and shipping. I thought, “it can’t be too much, it’s so small”, but the company refused and insisted that I could only send the entire device to them for repair. That would cost as much as a new speaker, which is the racket, innit? The issue can now be solved with magnetic charging cables (no more plugging and unplugging), so I’m game to get it working yet again. I WILL NOT accept that this cannot be fixed. But I’d prefer not to spend the time attaching yet another USB plug to the little circuit board. It’s so tiny I can barely see it, even through a high-quality work light with crystal magnifier. And besides, I think I’m missing an easier solution. Any ideas about replacing the whole power supply? Or do I just need to attempt another USB replacement? Something else I’m missing?
I’m not to good in soldering as well. But I found an easy fix I guess… on the boards backside are the conveniently labeled connectors “ground” an “5v in” so I simply cut apart a super cheap USB-c charging cable (extension so I would have an usbc input port) and soldered the two cables to the points… then hotgued the imput directly to backcover so it’s not gonna come loose again… I jumped a few resistors on the line I guess, don’t know what effect that is gonna have, but for now it works ?
I’ll presume you can’t run it off the USB type-A socket next to the mini. If so, it’s sad - the type-A is much more robust, but you could bridge the mini +V to the type-A. Otherwise, I’d graft a short pigtail to a standard coaxial power socket and get the matching plugged supply at 5V and 1/2+ Amps. Early cell phone chargers were 5V @ ~1A and Very well made (I have several). Just be certain of correct polarity. I hate the mini-USB: Way too fragile.
Sorry I can’t be of any help. But I have one of these speakers in my shop right now. I am looking for a charge port for it. But I can’t seem to find a part number anywhere. Where did you get yours from?
Hi Atticus, I’m having the same problem with my speaker but I don’t think I can safely detach the back PCB from the larger board. I’m new to fixing these sort of things so any input on how you did this would be much appreciated.
The microUSB is prone to fail again so I didn’t bother to replace it. Instead, I pried the back off to expose the screws that hold the front speakers on. Then I had access to the inside. The power board with the defective USB has a ribbon cable that is glued inside stopping you from pulling it out but if you have the front speakers out you can see the ribbon cable. On the bottom of the power board is writing indicated 5VIN and Ground. Using a sharp knife, i separated the ribbon cable so that the two wires were freed up. Then I sliced open a small amount of the wire insulation to expose the copper wire. I had a 5V DC adaptor and cut the connector off to give me a positive and negative wire. Then I spliced the wired together. On the ribbon cable, the positive was the first wire on the right and then moving left, the third wire was negative (but it’s marked on the board anyway). Now I have a 5 V adaptor hard wired in that I can use to charge the battery or run right off the wall outlet. Everything else works as normal except for the useless USB port. Not a hard repair. Just need to have a good working surface and plenty of light.
