My daughter has a much-loved teddy bear with a voicebox inside that says a prayer when it’s squeezed….at least…it did until one day it stopped working.
In our house, it’s the general expectation that everything can be fixed. My daughter told me the bear wasn’t working, and expected me to be able to fix it. That’s just how it is — nothing is really broken, nothing ever dies, and “please fix it” is all too common…so here’s how the process went THIS time.
First, my wife opened the bear up so i could get to the internals and pull out the voicebox.
After opening up the voicebox, here’s what we find…
That little piece isn’t supposed to be disconnected. And it’s supposed to have (2) wires. Not good. This cheap little speaker has seen better days.
If you look carefully at the speaker, it is marked with 8-Ohm, .25 watts. I found a suitable replacement at Amazon for just a few dollars. It’s a bit larger, but we can work with it.
Let’s get it wired up, soldered, and prepared for surgery.
Remove the old wires from the voicebox to make room for the new wires — careful to note where the wires are soldered when doing work like this.
Two connections on the left side are for the battery — it was still in good health. The wires for the speaker connect to the two solder points in the top left corner of the PCB.
We still have to use the old, defective speaker as a spacer. The voicebox is tensioned by springs in the corners, and when it is squeezed, the back of the speaker presses a rubberized switch that turns on the voice. Even though the speaker doesn’t make sound, we will still use it to fill the space inside the voicebox.
The voicebox is -supposed- to have two springs to maintain tension , but there was only one present. I stole a spring from a ballpoint pen to get proper tension in the corners.
Here we see the new speaker wired up, externally, to the voicebox for testing.
Not the prettiest, but it looks like it should work
Let’s have a test…..will it talk to us?
Now, let’s see if we can clean this up a bit and make it kid-proof.
A bit of tape to hold the speaker and wires in place should do the job.
And here we have the final repaired voicebox…The wires for the replacement speaker is fed through a small hole in the voicebox. Had to make sure that the speaker wires didn’t interfere with the springs/squeeze activation of the voicebox — always be mindful of moving parts.
Here’s the final test before reassembly:
Here’s the reassembled, repaired, and re-stitched bear. Good as new, didn’t even leave a scar 🙂
And here’s the final test and results….