Guide to Changing the CR100 Battery

justintime,

GOO GONE seems to be the darling of the green set because of the heavy citrus smell. The major point for me is "Contains petroleum distillates. ... Do not use near heat, sparks or flame." To me, this means "nameless stew of industrial solvents". It does not fit my idea of "green". My experience is that GOO GONE is generally not safe for use with polymers -- unless the polymer is the item you want to remove from a glass or metal surface. I always test carefully.

Some of the GOO GONE fractions have a fairly low evaporation rate. Also, GOO GONE tends to leave a difficult to remove film, that will interfere with adhesives. The SONOS gasket may be better in a few days.

GOO GONE is my common (one can purchase it without some sort of special connection) solvent of last resort. I'll usually follow the GOO GONE with a milder solvent that will remove the GOO GONE film.

Justintime,
PM me your address and i'll send you one...i have a couple of dud controllers that i'm not using..you can have one of them.

Incidentally.....I have never had to use Glue of any sort...double sided tape is perfect...and even then it only seems to be on rare occasions that the original won't just go back.

pwilli, thank you! PM sent!

Just curious, if my CR100 is way outside of warranty, what risk do I have purchasing a replacement battery and doing it myself. I have several controllers and now the 2nd controller stopped charging on the cradle and only charges when plugged into the jack on the top of the controller. The last time this happened Sonos had me send for a replacement which cost about $100.00. Cleaning the contacts on the bottom and making sure the pins are protruding sufficiently does not seem to help in any way. I have been led to believe that this not charging on the cradle issue is really a battery issue. I have never replaced any batteries on any controllers and some of them are probably several years old -- probably more than 5 years. In any case, the cautions about voiding warranty do not seem to matter much in my case unless if my battery replacement doesn't work you are saying that Sonos would not then replace the unit under the $100 replacement program.

Thanks for your reply.

Welcome to the forum.

I believe -- and I'm sure I'll be quickly corrected if I'm wrong -- that it is Sonos policy not to service components that have had their warranty seals broken by the end-user. If that's true, it would disqualify you from the replacement program.

You may have some luck with a replacement unit by searching eBay if you must have a CR100.

Just curious, if my CR100 is way outside of warranty, what risk do I have purchasing a replacement battery and doing it myself. I have several controllers and now the 2nd controller stopped charging on the cradle and only charges when plugged into the jack on the top of the controller. The last time this happened Sonos had me send for a replacement which cost about $100.00. Cleaning the contacts on the bottom and making sure the pins are protruding sufficiently does not seem to help in any way. I have been led to believe that this not charging on the cradle issue is really a battery issue. I have never replaced any batteries on any controllers and some of them are probably several years old -- probably more than 5 years. In any case, the cautions about voiding warranty do not seem to matter much in my case unless if my battery replacement doesn't work you are saying that Sonos would not then replace the unit under the $100 replacement program.

Thanks for your reply.

Actually it is a bad design issue IMHO (and fixable) and can't believe Sonos jacked you for $100 since you're not alone in experiencing this issue as its been reported on this very thread back 2007.

Have a look at the pictures linked in this thread.

http://forums.sonos.com/showpost.php?p=48781&postcount=23

and another with the same problem.

http://forums.sonos.com/showpost.php?p=107501&postcount=25

If it were me I'd open it up, bend the tabs out a bit, and slap it back together.

I have just used this great guide to change the batteries on my 2 controllers. Would have made a mess if not for this.

The blue backing can be restuck without any glue. Since the screws are on the 4 corners and along the long sides, just prise up the rubber where the screws are - do not remove the whole blue backing. When you are done, press it down firmly after working the little lugs into the recess - it reseals itself.

My batteries were not totally gone but they only lasted for about 6 hours with quite intense operating. Lasted about 4 years.

great guide.
i removed the blue backing, and it seems that originally it is not glued but some double sided tape is used.
probably a precut piece of double sided tape, but you could easily replace with normal dual sided tape.

in the netherlands batteries are obtainable via replacedirect.nl. for all you dutchies looking for batteries

Thanks to this guide, I just replaced two controller batteries. While I had them open, also bent the contacts up and cleaned the pads so they charge on the cradles again.

They are about 5.5 years old with constant use. The old batteries were lasting less than an hour and charging in about 5 minutes.

Just wanted to say thanks.