Wireless Charging base failures or options?

Sweet! Hey, can you post a link to the pins you ordered to fix it? That way people with this same problem in the future (and you know there will be) will know what to get.

Yeah, I also would be interested to know what pins you have used.

This worked for me with part number ED9001-ND.

https://www.digikey.co.nz/en/products/de...

Process is pretty simple:

- Peel off the rubber base - it's stuck to the metal base plate with a double sided adhesive disk.

- Unscrew the base plate and remove.

- Pop off the white plastic caps that are securing the circuit board with the tip of a Stanley knife.

- Remove the board, turn it over, use a soldering iron to free the existing pins and solder on the new ones.

- Reassemble - Once back in place, I covered the board with a strip of electrical tape instead of the white plastic caps. One of my metal bases was still sticky enough just to put the rubber straight back on, the other needed some new double sided tape.

Thanks! I will give this a try. Just curious if your repair is still working.

also which contact failed on yours? all of ours have been the inner contact.

We bought the set, and both chargers failed. They did send us new ones, but it took almost 6 months. [they claimed they were waiting for a shipment]

The one that gets the most use, which is very little use, failed within a couple months. The second charger was not really used and it got swapped over to the other light.

3 dead chargers, 1 working for the time being...

Just did the repair on two chargers with part ED9001-ND, an old 2019 one and a very recent replacement that immediately failed.

The 2019 one had the longer PCB and passthrough original pins, while the new one has a short PCB and surface mounted pins. The part worked for both. The old board required some extra solder to remove the old pin, while the new one was a little annoying to align because the pins are not placed in the middle of the pad but a little closer. On one I replaced both pins and on one I replaced only the inside failed pin. The results seem equivalent.

All in all an easy fix, and the new pins seem much more resilient. And if not, I can swap a new in.

(BTW, the two chargers both draw 5W when the light is off, but the new one draws more than double when the light is on.)

Hehe, i like the approach. 👍

@gengordon That's ingenious! Thanks for sharing.

Thank you! I’ll try this.

Considered the inverted base on top several times before, but never got it to work, personally. My guess is my pins are in a lesser gravity-coaxable shape 🥴

I can confirm that the red circles identify plastic caps that need to come off - a bit of leverage with the tip of a Stanley knife did the trick for me. I've repaired five bases now with a mix of long and short circuit boards. I used the surface pin linked in my previous post for all of them.

Appreciate all the info! It's frustrating how easily these original charger pins break and how Casper made them more difficult to replace.

I believe I found the same replacement pin part number on Amazon, but not sure how many pins given per order, any thoughts?

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00DEFT5RM/?co...

@ggsgj6pvg0ex9y1 Ouch, that's the price for one pin. Including shipping, that's over $10 for a single pin. The ones I ordered from AliExpress came in at about $2.00 for 10 of them, or more like $0.20 each. I mean, I understand if that's the only one you can find, but seems to be massively overpriced to me.

Note that 0.177" is almost exactly 4.5mm, which just happens to be the size I ordered from AliExpress for my Ember Mug charging plate. Here's a link to the ones I ordered (note that I haven't received them yet).

https://www.aliexpress.us/item/325680524...

You can take a look at my Ember Mug guide for ideas, but it's not complete since I don't have the pins yet.

Ember Mug Charging Base Pogo Pins Replacement

With that sort of situation where you have a base that charges a device, whether that's a light or a coffee mug, there's a trade-off between wired and wireless charging options. With the existing method, you simply present voltage to the two pins, which is then received by the device. Simple and inexpensive to implement.

Wireless charging, however, works entirely differently. What you have to do is convert the DC power to AC that then powers a coil to generate a magnetic field in the base. The receiving device has to have a matching coil to receive the magnetic field, which then generates an AC current. After that, the AC current has to be converted back to DC to charge the battery.

So while it sounds like a simple concept, you would have to add a receiving coil and the appropriate voltage conversion circuitry inside the lamp to make it work. You may be able to locate a wireless power receiver that does what you need, but you've also got to be sure it's outputting the correct voltage for your device.

Definitely an interesting idea, and I'd love to hear all about it should you succeed. There are lots of very smart people on here who may be able to help if you decide to go forward with your little project.

@dadibrokeit thanks for the advice! I've taken it apart and I'm going to give it a go. Do we know what the voltage would be for this?

@gman13579 According to Brb's (@ggsgj6pvg0ex9y1) answer, the pins measure 9V, with the inner pin being GND and the outer one being +9V.

The curious part is that the only Glow Light guide that's been created is for replacing the battery, which is shown as being a standard Li-Ion 18650 rated for 3.6V.

That would theoretically make your job easier, as I'm sure you can find wireless charging circuits made for charging LI-Ion batteries, but of course that would mean you'd have to figure out how to bypass/disable the existing charging circuits.

@dadibrokeit that was my thoughts. I took it apart today. The main connections for the rings are two brings that power the circuit board. The battery itself has a standard connection. If I'm able to "hotwire" the wireless controller to those rings I could probably charge it that way.