Fixing a Broken Power Plug on the MicroDrone 2.0

The Microdrone 2.0 is a pretty sweet little quadcopter. Surprisingly stable and cautiously responsive for its small size, it’s also able to whip around outdoors in a bit of a breeze, high in the sky.

The unit I have, however, has an overly tight socket union for the powercord to the battery. So tight that a while ago, I accidentally yanked the wires out of the plug on the quadcopter.

I’ve had this on my desk with intentions to fix it for some time, and finally found a few spare minutes this weekend to do so.

First, rather than just crimp the old plug back on (which seemed unlikely to work well), I had purchased a new power cord with the appropriate plug connector on it. This isn’t entirely straightforward — lipo batteries have a number of different connector types and it took  some internet sleuthing to feel somewhat confident about the one to order. When it arrived, I discovered the coloring of the wires is reverse that of the drone, something I decided to overlook.

Despite having a batch of new tools to test out as well from Dremel (Versa-Tip butane soldering iron), Craftsman (12-in-one multitool), plus my Vise-Grip wire strippers (these are the greatest), and a can of Bernz-o-matic butane, I still didn’t have the right tool to do a perfect fix — I was missing a desoldering iron to get the broken wires out entirely and put the new one in through the Microdrone’s PCB, to help give them a long-term solid connection. So instead, I currently have the new wires soldered to the board on the surface, a fast, dirty, and inelegant fix that nonetheless got me back in the air in minutes, rather than putting off the repair for more days while promptly getting too busy to track down my desoldering tool.

I did, however, make sure to doubly reinforce the new power cord with a dual layer of heat-shrink tube. This had an unintended consequence as it forces the wires to be very straight and stiff, but they still have enough give to connect to the battery.

After the quick soldering job, I plugged in the battery and watched the LEDs blink back to life. Then I took this guy outside and raced it around the street for the rest of the afternoon. Too much fun.