The Smell of Molten Projects in the Morning

Ed Nisley's Blog: Shop notes, electronics, firmware, machinery, 3D printing, laser cuttery, and curiosities. Contents: 100% human thinking, 0% AI slop.

The New Hotness

  • Ooma Telo 2: Speaker FAIL

    The tiny voice inside our Ooma Telo 2 box died, although the VOIP phone service continued to work fine. A bit of searching showed the speaker seems to be the weak link.

    Well, I can fix that.

    Start by prying the recessed top panel off the case:

    Ooma Telo 2 - upper case latches
    Ooma Telo 2 – upper case latches

    Remove the circuit board to expose the tiny speaker, taking care not to rip the tiny wires out of the tiny connector:

    Ooma Telo 2 - OEM speaker to PCB
    Ooma Telo 2 – OEM speaker to PCB

    You can’t measure a dead speaker, but it seems to be an 8 Ω unit.

    The speaker sits in a rubber surround, with a foam rubber cushion against the PCB, tucked into a walled garden stiffening the case:

    Ooma Telo 2 - speaker port
    Ooma Telo 2 – speaker port

    I don’t happen to have a tiny 8 Ω speaker, but I do have a bunch of small speakers (Update: 28 mm OD), so I bulldozed those walls with a flush cutting pliers and a bit of cussing to make room:

    Ooma Telo 2 - modified speaker port
    Ooma Telo 2 – modified speaker port

    Nibble an adapter ring to match the rim of the new speaker, thereby routing the sound out those little holes, and hot-melt glue it in place:

    Ooma Telo 2 - speaker adapter
    Ooma Telo 2 – speaker adapter

    Hot-melt glue the new speaker in place atop the adapter, taking care to fill all the edges / cracks / crevices below it with an impenetrable wall of glop:

    Ooma Telo 2 - replacement speaker installed
    Ooma Telo 2 – replacement speaker installed

    The sealing part turns out to be critical with these little speakers, because a leak from front to back will pretty much cancel all the sound from the cone.

    Cut the wires off the old speaker, affix to the new one, replace the PCB, snap the case lid in place, and it sounds better than new.

    Millions of transistors in those ICs, but Ooma can’t spec a good speaker? Maybe they should have used a bigger speaker to begin with; ya never know.