PSU Dissected for Repair

[S80_UK]

If 1 amp was not enough, then 1.4 will be too close to the limit even if it works. I would suggest that you look for a supply that can provide at least 2 amps to have a good margin.

Regards,

Les.

[JohnBoyZ]

There is a Meanwell PSU which might be worth a look, the PS-35-15 which has adjustable voltage 13.5v to 16.5v @ 2.4A, here is a link to the spec
http://www.meanwelldirect.co.uk/public/ranges/pdfs%5Cr869%5Cr869_3.pdf I havent checked the physical size compared to the space available but the dimensions of the PS-35-15 are 101.6mm x 50.8mm x 24mm.

[terencegbg]

Seems to be me keeping this thread alive

however the radio is driving me crazy! I have replaced the psu with a 12V 3A and everything works great now except that now the subwoofer does not work!!
there is only sound coming from the front.... i have felt on the subwoofer and there is defenately no action! removed it and tested it with a 9V battery and it jumped
this would mean it works or?

Tested to connect to an old radio speaker no sound either..

what the hell can be wrong now?

I tested earphones in the jack and there it sounded good bass....

Btw stupid question however the unit is not tjat intelligent tjat thewoofer does not work until the unit is completely assembled?

any help apreciated!

[DJans]

however the radio is driving me crazy! I have replaced the psu with a 12V 3A and everything works great now except that now the subwoofer does not work!!
there is only sound coming from the front.... i have felt on the subwoofer and there is defenately no action! removed it and tested it with a 9V battery and it jumped
this would mean it works or?

The subw speaker has its amplifier placed in the back housing of the unit. Are you sure you re-connect both plugs from the front to the back housing correctly. Have a closer look at the connectors, I had one subw amp connector where one pin was pressed out of the connector when sticking both parts together .

Moreover you can check if the cable to the sub amp is correctly placed on the logical board in the front part of the housing.

Hope this helps.

DJans

[terencegbg]

I have measured all connectors to the sub amp and there is a connection..... if disconnect it and connect it again the sub woofer jumps slightly so there should be a connection.

I guess my amp for the sub has gone also

[DJans]

That's bad news. Sometimes if a PSU dies it kills one or more of the amp boards, very very bad.
Maybe you ask one of the radio gurus here if they have a subw amp as spare...

[doordevil1240]

Wow, I'm impressed with the provided solutions here. Especially the contributions by users like burkhardi and JohnBoyZ.

Not to offend any-one here, but I think by re-using the original PSU, the problem of heat which partly caused these PSU from dying remains as well.
Therefore using the "LM317" method as described here, is in my opinion a bad idea as well.
With this method, the LM317 still needs to get rid of 6 to 9 Watt of heat.
On top of that I think this heat might even harm the rubber-like construction of the sub-woofer speaker as well.

Therefore I tried the method with a step-down dc buck converter.
Essentially it is technically the same as the original PSU, though by splitting the step-down in 2 parts, the heat in the sub-woofer box is reduced.

To start, I removed all the internals of the original PSU and removed the mains connection as well.
Took a 19,5 Volt DC laptop power-supply for the first step down. Though I used one providing 2 Amp, I recommend one with more head-room i.e. 2,5 Amp.
Hot-glued an aluminum strip with the adapter-plug for the laptop power-supply on the position of the original mains.
Since I'm lazy with regard to soldering, I used this step-down converter:
I connected all the original cables to this PCB (Very handy that you can chain the 19,5 Volt further on).
Hooked up the Soundbridge front-unit, and adjusted the output of the DC-converter to 9,5 Volt by using a cheap panel volt-meter at the output of the PCB (again, the double connectors are very handy here to connect the volt-meter).
Reused the black gum from the original PSU to stick the new PCB to the bottom of the plastic PSU box.
Used some tape to glue the new PSU back to it original form, mounted it back in the sub-woofer box, and used a bit of sealant to close the sub-woofer.
I estimated the costs of this method around € 50,-, including the voltmeter, tape and sealant.

Since I bought an already broken unit, I was surprised about the sound of the R1000.
However I have a feeling that the sound of the sub-woofer is a bit strong compared to the sound of the front-unit.
Maybe somebody with a bit more knowledge in the area of speakers can provide some advice.
I tightened the screws holding the subwoofer already, which gave some improvement.
Maybe there is something wrong the inlay of the wadding.

[tedhessjr]

I cannot heap enough praises on the participants of this thread and the great help they have been over the last 2 years. Thankyou, thankyou, thankyou for the good work and many suggestions.

I ordered my first R1000 in the fall of '05 even though I didn't receive it until the Spring of '06. It performed perfectly until December 2008 - dead PSU. After pouring though this thread (much shorter than now), I concluded I would open the box and see if the problem was indeed the well documented the dead capacitor in the PSU - It was. Not wanting to be without the radio (it is my alarm clock), I ordered a new one from Roku (they were still selling them then). I finally got the box opened on the dead one and the power supply disassembled and replaced the bad cap -- All OK, now I had 2 working R1000s. No worries - kept the repaired one in my "lab" - nice.

Fast forward to February of this year -- The repaired unit died again (2+ yrs after repair). Came back to this thread which was now 11 pages long and read it from front to back and noticed all the suggestions and workarounds and decided to give replacing the PSU completely a go. I ended up using a 19v Laptop brick and a inexpensive DC-DC converter (CUI V7809-1000) to supply 9v as mentioned by someone back in this thread. I got all the parts I needed from Digi-Key (parts list follows). Opened the box again, built a small circuit board following the schematic on the data sheet for the converter and mounted a barrel connector on the base for the external 19v supply. All is well again. But...

About a month later (a couple of weeks ago), my unit purchased in 2008 died with exactly the same problem - dead cap in PSU - groan! I really love opening these woofer enclosures - not. Anyway, ordered up the same "kit" from Digi-Key again and just finished replacing my 2nd unit's PSU. Both are happily working now and we shall see what is in store for them in the future.

Code: Select all

PSU Rebuild kit: (approx cost < $50.00)

Digi-Key #          Description                             Price

102-1217-ND      DC/DC Converter 9v, 1A (V7809-1000)         6.69
T1120-P5P-ND     Desktop Adapter 19v, 3.42A                 27.39
CP-5-ND          Connector 2.1mm jack pnl mount              2.11
399-3638-ND      Tantalum cap 10uf, 16v                      1.08
399-3669-ND      Tantalum cap 10uf, 50v                      4.47   
V2025-ND         PC board 2-side PPH 2x3 (cut in half)       6.26


Note: The DC-DC converter runs cool so no heat issues. The brick is outside the box so no issue there. I didn't go the LM317T route due to the heat issues people talked about in this thread.

Final note: I've been looking at SqueezeBox devices from Logitech for the next round, but I hope I don't have to go there. I really like the Roku radios and M1000/M1001 units in the house - at least their PSUs are external.

l8r, /ted

[G4EZE]

I too have a failed R1000 - my second in fact.
I plan to replace the PSU with a single 12V unit as recommended elsewhere in this thread.

Question - do I need to disassemble the rear of the unit to get to the PSU wires (blue/red/black) or are these the same wires on the molex connector that joins the two halves? In other words, to avoid disassembling the rear unit, can I simply leave the molex connector disconnected and feed 12V to the blue and red wires, 0V to black at the display end of the connector?

[tedhessjr]

Well, for diagnostic purposes, I do connect a suitable 12v@3a supply as follows: Positive to red/blue and negative to black(2) + white shield. If the radio powers up, you're good to go. As a long term solution, I'm not sure this is the best solution. The 9v supply should be able to handle 12v input as folks have mentioned herein. The audio amp/display, however, will be under-powered.

The other connector is the sub-woofer electronics - leave as is.

/ted

[S80_UK]

The audio amp/display, however, will be under-powered.

Hi Ted,

Display will be fine - it is fed from a regulated 5 volt rail and this is fixed by another regulator circuit in the radio. You are right that the amplifier will have reduced maximum power due to the lower voltage, but for many users the difference will not be a big problem.

Les.

[DJans]

Well, for diagnostic purposes, I do connect a suitable 12v@3a supply as follows: Positive to red/blue and negative to black(2) + white shield. If the radio powers up, you're good to go. As a long term solution, I'm not sure this is the best solution. The 9v supply should be able to handle 12v input as folks have mentioned herein. The audio amp/display, however, will be under-powered.
/ted

I have two R1000s "refurbished" with a 12V/3A PSU more than 2 years ago. The units work great, the only thing is, you will lose a bit of the volume reserves but in my view that is OK.

[Joel53]

I would like to sing the praises of Matt Burkhardt (burkhardi@hotmail.com) in Texas who repaired my Soundbridge when the power supply and a speaker failed just after the warranty ended. When it failed again (18 months later), he repaired it (including other new problems) for barely more than the cost of shipment. The unit comes back looking brand new!!

I love the Soundbridge, -- when it works. However, because of the obvius shoddy design, and even more because of the LACK OF ASSISTANCE from Roku, I will not buy another Roku product again. I am using multiple Logitech products without problem

JOEL

[Burkhardi]

Thanks for the kind words Joel!
You had your unit repaired right before I updated my list to included three more items. You should be hassle free now...
Best regards, Matt

I would like to sing the praises of Matt Burkhardt (burkhardi@hotmail.com) in Texas who repaired my Soundbridge when the power supply and a speaker failed just after the warranty ended. When it failed again (18 months later), he repaired it (including other new problems) for barely more than the cost of shipment. The unit comes back looking brand new!!

I love the Soundbridge, -- when it works. However, because of the obvius shoddy design, and even more because of the LACK OF ASSISTANCE from Roku, I will not buy another Roku product again. I am using multiple Logitech products without problem

JOEL

[stevecanuck]

I finally found the time to repair my Soundbridge Radio which had been dead for the past year. In the interim I purchased a Squeezebox Radio which, while nice, didn't have the rich sound of the Roku.

So I had all the necessary caps and the diode to do a full repair. I also had links to the great picture breakdown Aaron provides on Flickr http://www.flickr.com/photos/aaronferru ... 318342504/

But oh my goodness, what a mess inside. It looks like whoever had the glue gun to put this together was a little enthusiastic. Glue covered all of the solder connections I needed access to. This was quite an excercise in trying to clean up the mess. In a couple places I just burnt through the glue with the soldering iron.

A quick inspection showed the typical bulging caps and charred diode, so all the parts were replaced. A quick power up test showed the machine was bought back to life, so I killed the power and started to reassemble it.

All in all, way to much time and frustration in trying to get this back together. I can't believe anyone with a reasonable level of technical skills and education could have signed off on such a horrific assembly.

I am hoping my hi-temp parts replacements keep this going for a few more years. But this is the last repair. Next time, I am going to give it some loving attention with the sledge hammer and get another Squeezebox.

I can only assume the same engineers responsible for this shambaholic have either electrocuted themselves with their shoddy work and improved the average IQ at Roku, or are still there building more shoddy devices. In either case, this is the only Roku device that will enter my house. I can only assume that the rest of their products are equally poorly made.