Saturday, July 2, 2011

Sheevaplug Power Supply Failure and Repair

My Sheevaplug's power supply failed recently, after less than a year of operation.  Unfortunately this is a common occurrence with GlobalScales Sheevaplug, and with only a 30 warranty it's leaving many owners a bit peeved.  Instead of purchasing a replacement power supply, which will likely fail again, I opted for an external (wall wart) power supply.  I'm currently using a 5V/2A supply, which works, however the original power supply is 5V/3A.  I ordered this 5V/3A power supply off Ebay. Beware this will take 3 or so weeks to arrive from China, but you can also order from US suppliers and pay just a bit more.  You'll notice this adapter has a 2.1/5.5mm barrel connector but the Sheevaplug uses a Molex, so you'll need to cut the Molex wires and solder on a barrel adapter.  I had one of these on hand, so I used it instead -- not exactly ideal as it is designed to mount on a pcb.  To compensate for the poor choice in parts, I slathered it with hot glue to insulate the contacts.  Be sure to identify the positive and negative connecters on the power supply, with a multimeter (mixing this up will probably destroy your plug).



I unscrewed the original power port and fed the barrel connector through and into the metal box where I connected it to the Molex wire.


I powered it on and the plug came back to life.  Unfortunately my SD card seemed to have gotten corrupted, which I was booting off of, so I had to fallback to boot off the flash.  The plug is working great now and hopefully it's even more reliable.

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