Eric Bylenga
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Replacing A Dash Robot Battery Part I

WARNING!!: This tutorial involves messing around with Lithium Ion battery cells which can explode if punctured or abused. Proceed at your own risk!

Introduction

At work we have a fleet of Wonder Dash robots that we purchased about six years ago. They're great little robots for kids to learn block coding with but sadly after pretty constant use their batteries are all giving up the ghost.

After doing a bunch of searching online, everywhere it seems to say that replacing the battery pack is impossible. However.... This is not technically true! It just takes some patience and a few simple tools! So far we've fixed 5 and we're well on our way to retrofitting our whole fleet with uprated batteries for another six years.



Tools Required

For this hack I used:

1 T10 Torx driver
1 #1 Philips driver
1 Exacto Knife
1 Multimeter
Electical tape
2 Small washers
1 18560 3.6V Lithium Ion Cell.

Surgery

Hi there Dash... I'm going to rip out your dead battery and hopefully not wreck you in the process...

Dash Bot

There are eight T10 Torx screws, 6 long and two short ones at the back.

Dash Bot

Remove the four little plastic thingys.

Dash Bot

Remove the three Phillips screws holding on the top cover.

Dash Bot

Unplug the two cables connecting the head motor and sensors.

Dash Bot

Remove the two screws here too. Also, fish the two cables from the previous step back into the hole from whence it came!

Dash Bot

With some fiddling the top of the dash should separate from the base. Carefully remove the wire connectors from the rear of the robot.

Dash Bot

Remove all the connecting cables from the motherboard.

Dash Bot

Remove the six screws holding down the motherboard to the base.

Dash Bot

Remove the five screws holding the head gear assembly together. Once the cover is removed, pay special attention to the orientation of the gears. There are two ring washers on the gear with the big centre hole and a small one on the other main gear.

Dash Bot

Remove the four screws holding the base halves together. Separate the tabs at the back and carefully pull the base in half.

Dash Bot

If you were careful like me, your Dash probably just exploded parts everywhere... Sigh.. Wheels and gears everywhere! This is how the front wheel gear assembly should look after tracking down the parts.

Dash Bot

There you go... All apart.

Dash Bot

Next up! Onward to the battery pack. Dash Battery Part II

Last Updated: April 3, 2022