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PBP is scratched on the bottom but otherwise fine. PineTab-V and PineNote are in flawless condition.

PineBuds Pro: Teardown and Battery Replacement

#repair #battery #electronics #Piner



My PineBuds Pro were new old stock. Never used, just sat in a box. When I finally charged them they ran about an hour at low volume with ANC off, which is well under spec.



These buds are repairable and the cells are cheap. The problem is that there's almost no teardown information for them anywhere online, so I wrote this up.



One thing to know before you start: if the buds are old, the cell inside has probably swollen. Mine had. Better to find that out now than halfway through prying the shell apart.



Disclaimer



This is a record of a repair I did on my own PineBuds Pro. I have an electronics background and years of hands-on soldering experience, and this write-up assumes a similar level of skill. It isn't a beginner guide, and it isn't a recommendation that anyone else attempt it.



Lithium cells can vent, catch fire, or explode if punctured, crushed, shorted, or overheated. Opening the buds is irreversible and voids any warranty.



If you try this, you do so entirely at your own risk. I accept no responsibility for any damage, injury, or loss that results.



⚠️ Lithium cells can catch fire if punctured or shorted. Don't pry near the cell, don't let metal touch both terminals, and stop if it gets hot. At your own risk.



Step 1: Open the earbud





[pic: squeezing the earbud shell]



There are no screws. The shell is held by internal clips with a little adhesive. The way in is to flex it.



The plastic is soft and has some give. Squeezing the shell deforms it just enough to strain the joint from inside, and the clips release and the glue tears before the plastic takes any damage.



Squeeze firmly near the seam and hold. The seam starts to separate, and you may even see the LED indicator through the gap. Keep the pressure on, work a plastic pry tool into the opening, then run it around the edge to release the remaining clips.



Squeeze in short bursts rather than one long press. Repeated flexing works the clips loose bit by bit, and you get much better control than with steady heavy force.



Step 2: A note on debris and tools



You'll see crumbs or dust as the shell opens. That's the old adhesive breaking up, not the plastic cracking. Nothing to worry about.



Use a plastic pry tool or spudger. Never a metal blade or screwdriver. The shell plastic is good quality and flexes well, but it's soft enough that metal will gouge it.



Use a wide tool too, not a pointed one. A narrow tip puts all the force on one spot, which dents the plastic and can crack the clip underneath. A broad edge spreads that force along the seam so the shell flexes as a whole. A guitar pick works well. Avoid anything sharp.



Step 3: Inside the earbud





[pic: shell apart, PCB visible, small black rubber cover loose in the shell]



With the shell apart you can see the PCB. It isn't screwed down. It's held by heat-staked plastic posts, where moulded pins have been pushed through the board and their tips melted flat.



How the touch controls work. The inside of the outer cover is lined with aluminium foil. Once assembled, that foil rests against two pogo pins on the PCB, and those pins run to the capacitive sensing pin on the chip. When you touch the outside of the shell (the side facing away from your ear), the capacitance changes and the chip reads it through those pins. That's the whole touch input path for volume, ANC and everything else.



The other four contacts sit on the opposite face, the side against your ear, next to the speaker. Those are the charging and flashing contacts, covered in Step 4.



Don't lose the mic gasket. There's a small black rubber cover sitting in the shell. It belongs over the microphone on the PCB, it isn't attached to anything, and it falls out very easily. Put it somewhere safe as soon as you see it.



Step 4: Remove the PCB





[pic: PCB removed, showing main chip, battery and wiring]



Cut or shave off the melted heads of the plastic posts, then lift the board out. The battery is underneath, hidden by the PCB.



The main chip is a BES2300 (Bestechnic), running from an external 26.000 MHz crystal. A solid, well-supported part.



Six very fine heat-resistant wires run under the board:

• 2 to the battery, B+ and B−
  
• 4 to the external contact pads: V+ and V− for charging, TX and RX for firmware flashing
  

Title: Where should I post a PineBuds Pro repair and battery replacement guide?

Hi everyone,
I'm new to the forum, and I'd like to thank the Pine64 community for creating such a welcoming place. I've been following Pine64 products for a long time.
There isn't much information about the PineBuds Pro online, so I thought it might be useful to share what I've learned about repairing them, including how to replace the battery.
Could someone point me to the right section to post this in? Thanks in advance, and best wishes to all.

Hi all,

Flashed the latest danctnix yesterday because I kept getting errors when I connected my phone to the USB-port. I need to transfer (really big) files from my Pinetab to my phone, which works without any problems from my desktop computer.
Unfortunately the update did not help; I'm getting the same errors ("an unknown error occured"/"KIO Client stopped working"). After plugging in the cable I sometimes get the option to open the device with the filemanager. If I do, I get incomplete directory listings, or errors as I try to descend into a directory. During the procedure sometimes the connection is lost and I get a new popup in my screen if I want to open the device with the filemanager.

The kde-cli-tools are at the latest version and I already replaced the USB-C cable a few times to no avail.

Has anybody noticed the same behaviour, or am I missing something here?

Any suggestions more than welcome!

I've spent a lot of time thinking about the friction of using a modern phone and I think it comes down to one thing: every device today stands alone, closed and fixed, telling you exactly what it is and how you're allowed to use it. Little to no expandability, in hardware or software.

I think it's time to challenge that. That belief led me to write a hacker phone manifesto — an attempt to revisit the values behind devices like the N900, and sketch what a phone that's open and hardware-expandable could actually look like.

I'd love to hear whether people think this is technically viable today, or whether the market killed that idea for good reasons. And if this is off-topic here, I apologize in advance, you can point me some place better.

https://beyondframe.ink/hacker-phone-the...-hardware/

Hello. Ordering from Pine64 has been hands down the worst experience ever. I have encountered many terrible websites but by far this is horrendous. I get hit with the captcha verification every thirty or so seconds. I do the annoying "mark the bicycle" captcha which eventually says is wrong followed by "tap the bus" captcha. And this verification expires every 20 or so seconds? i open my phone to open the banking app and my card details and it is expired and I have to do the captcha again. 

Worst of all, after all this, when I finally hit pay, I get this wonderful error: "Field Billing address 1 should have only English letters, digits, spaces and , / @ . ( ) - characters."

Great, ascii is the only character set in the world. For Once I decided to spend more money on a company with values I respect, I am barred from buying. It is like you do not want anyone in Europe to buy from you. 

I corrected the address and the error still exists. Only after two tries I realised it is talking about the main billing and shipping address not the billing address it asks AGAIN after entering card details.

I don't need any resolution for this until you fix this terrible website. Even AI can make a better payment experience than Pine64. I still have not placed the large order I wanted and am now considering going back to buying cheaper ones from other sources. Thank you very much guys.

Hello,

I had my Rockpro64 V2.1 board running fine with Debian bookworm and U-Boot built from sources written to SPI. The board was run only occasionally so did not have a lot of stress so far (I believe less than 100 operating hours total). In normal usage the CPU temperature reported by the internal sensor was around 48°C.

Some days ago I had problems booting: the white led would not come on. I tried shorting 23-25 to bypass SPI and I was able to boot from the SD card I originally used to flash U-Boot. Even if the jumper was removed during boot, trying "sf probe" resulted in an error message saying "unrecognised jedec_spi_nor flash".

After this, every further attempt to reboot to reboot with the same SD card resulted in the following:

• HDMI completely dead
  
• white led comes on, no matter if the 23-25 jumper is installed or not (seems like the SPI is dead, so it skips to SD anyway)
  
• U-Boot boots fine as reported by serial terminal
  
• the following error is reported by U-boot:
  Loading Environment from SPIFlash... jedec_spi_nor flash@0: unrecognized JEDEC id bytes: 00, 00, 00*** Warning - spi_flash_probe_bus_cs() failed, using default environment

• after some minutes the board self-reboots
  
• after this, the board keeps rebooting over and over every few minutes
  

Is there a browsable source code repository for the PINE64 Android sources. I would like to avoid doing a full 111 GiB SDK download, just to have a look at the Quartz64 Zero device tree  .

Friends, how does one activate vibration motor in bash script?

I received my Pinetime on Saturday, July 11.  It currently has InfiniTime 1.14.1 installed and I am trying to update it to 1.16.1.

I can pair the watch to my Pixel 10 Pro that is running Android 17 both via normal pairing and via Gadgetbridge without issue, but the watch constantly disconnects and reconnects.

When I try to update the firmware via Gadgetbridge, it will get to a random percentage and then disconnect, failing to update the firmware.

I removed Gadgetbridge, deleted the Pinetime from my phone, installed NRF Connect, then tried the update again through that.  The watch screen will change to FW update screen and stay at 0% while NRF Connect will get to a random percentage of the upload before the watch reboots.

I tried https://infinitimeexplorer.netlify.app/ through the current version of Chrome on my Windows 11 25H2 laptop and I get the same behavior as NRF Connect.

I have charged the watch fully, tried the update both on and off the charger, rebooted the watch as well as my phone and laptop multiple times and the behavior is the same.

Does anyone know what else I can try?