FrSky Taranis Speaker Upgrade

At this point I think I've seen more of the inside of my Taranis than the outside. So here's another Taranis mod; not really a very important one but a simple one. The internal speaker of the Taranis isn't really the nicest thing to listen to so I thought I'd put a better one in. I found a little 1 W 8 ohm 36mm speaker on eBay for about $4 which is a bit bigger than the one in the from the factory but it will still fit with the help of a little hot glue. So here's the steps.

Step 1.
Open the Taranis up and unplug the stock speak and pull it out. Here's mine next to its replacement.

Step 2.
Now unsolder the connectors from the stock speaker and solder them onto the new one.

Step 3.
Trim off the little studs around the speaker mounting ring.

Step 4. Apply a little hot glue to mount the new speaker and plug it in.

Step 5.
Put the Taranis back together and fire it up!

Lipo Conversion Part 2

So I had such great success turning my battery drill into a lipo powered device I thought I'd give something else a go.

I've got a headlight for my mountain bike which has a cree LED in it. Its fantastically bright but its hard to mount it on the handle bars and have it point where I want it to and also the cord is long and gets in the way and finally the battery pack is big and bulky and takes ages to charge. Looks like a good time to break out the lipos and see if I can sold all those problems at once.


Step 1.
The light in its unmodified state.

Step 2.
Cut off the normal plug from the light and solder on a plug that matches the plugs on your lips. I'm using deans plugs here. I chose this 2S 1300mah battery because the voltage the light was supposed to work with (according to the writing on the battery pack)  was was 7V and a 2S is close enough.

Step 3.
Cut and glue a mountain bracket onto your helmet. I did this because mounting it here made a lot more sense to me that mounting it on my handle bars. this way it pointed where ever I wanted it to.

Step 4.
On the back I glued a little bit of foam as padding and a Velcro strap to hold the battery in place and to offset the weight at the front on the helmet.

Step 5.
All ready for riding at night! It charges faster and is way more useful than the original set up. Plus while I was at it I removed the little green LED inside the on button of the light to prevent battery drain when it's not actually turned on. The other good thing about this set up is I can use my lipo checker to see how much charge is left in my battery before using the helmet so I know I've got enough power to make it through the ride. I've also discovered that 3S batteries work with this particular light.