A few years ago work the health insurance company gave all of our schools smart scales. The idea being that staff would weigh themselves and do some sort of ‘Biggest Loser’ type deal.

Shocker! Our teachers didn’t care and didn’t want to use it. We also work in a school without a weight room, exercise room or any showers. Its not like people could exercise at work. When I used to bike to work I had to take a wash cloth and towel into the staff bathroom and use the sink to clean myself. No one wants to weigh themselves in a public place. So it went into the closet and stayed there for a few years.

Don’t get me wrong. It’s a super nice scale. It’s a Withings Body Cardio. Despite being several years old, this scale still sells for a $150 on Amazon. This year I pulled it out of the closet and tried to charge it. While it always said it was charging, the battery never held a charge and you couldn’t get it to read anything but charging. Resetting it, leaving it plugged in for overnight, and other solutions didn’t work.

Researching the issue, it turns out that the scale’s software can over-drain a battery to the point that it no longer holds a charge, and sitting in the closet for over a year can do that. Withings solution to the problem is to offer a discount towards a new scaled (25%).

Anyways, being that it was now junk that didn’t work, options were either leave it there broken for the new principal or throw it out. Instead I took it home and decided to play around with it. Sam had a soldering iron here, and in some forums online people talked about replacing the battery. So, why the hell not try it out. I bought an $8 battery off amazon and got to work cracking open the scale.

Twenty minutes of work and the scale now works! Which is kind of exciting. I was able to put a new battery in, solder the wires to the battery, and get it charging. I even was able to weigh myself.

Of course I’ll leave in the garage for a little bit to make sure I didn’t screw up the battery and in the hopes that it won’t explode while charging, but it was kind of fun to play with electronics, even something simple like this.