Cycliq Fly6 (V) Teardown

ID: 144683

Description: So after a couple of years of pretty flawless...

Steps:

  1. The housing is held closed with four crosshead screws, but these are hidden behind little rubber bungs that ensure the unit is watertight. As you might be able to see from the photo, one of them got a bit chewed up in the process before I worked out what they were and how to dig them out. (Technical solution is an unbent paper clip!
  2. If you haven't already, remove the micro SD card now!
    3. Step image
  3. Inside the housing, there are two PCBs, linked by a ribbon cable.
  4. The LED PCB is screwed onto the lens with two crosshead screws. The ribbon is permanently attached to this PCB... don't try to pull it out!
  5. The main PCB is screwed into the housing with three more crosshead screws. When you remove the PCB, you need to free the side with the power button on first, as the charging port and SD card socket nestle slightly inside the other side of the housing.
  6. Once you've released the main PCB, you can pull the ribbon cable out of its socket on the underside, and the LED PCB is free.
    7. Step image Step image
  7. The battery has a press-fit connection to the underside of the main PCB; you can pull it out but don't yank the wires! Instead, use the end of a small screwdriver or similar, to remove the white plastic jack.
  8. The battery is held into the housing by a little plastic strap with... two more crosshead screws! Get these out and then wiggle the battery free. The plastic strap is glued onto the battery and will come out attached.
  9. The battery also has a foam block at one end. Vibrations will ruin the sound captured by the microphone. You can just pull the plastic retaining strap off the battery; the adhesive isn't strong.
    10. Step image
  10. Right, at this point I tested my battery. as suspected it was dead as a dodo. While it's not surprising that it would fail eventually, it was working just fine in the days preceding its sudden demise, and was not swollen or water damaged, so it's anybody's guess what happened.
  11. Looking at the shrinkwrap, it's just an ordinary 18650 lithium ion battery. It even has the name of the manufacturer printed on it, which is nice. Hello Kayo Battery.
  12. https://kayobattery.com/lithium-ion-cyli...
  13. This is a battery which without its little monitoring PCB at the end, probably costs €3 in decent volumes. I'm going to have to spend €6 to get a Samsung branded one with solder tags, probably also made by Kayo...
  14. Unwrapped, there's a little PCB at the end. The last thing I'm going to do is snip the tabs as close to the terminals as I can, so that I have as much material as possible when I try to reattach a replacement.
    15. Step image Step image
  15. My teardown ends here. Because I'm hoping to resurrect my product by replacing the defective battery, I'm not removing the speaker or microphone, which are glued into the housing with a waterproof silicon - type adhesive.
  16. All in all it's a simple enough device; I'm sure Cycliq will suggest they spent lots on R&D but the PCBs are sparsely populated and not with super high tech or high cost ICs. Interestingly, the memory has no markings whatsoever.
  17. I like that assembly only requires one size screwdriver - fewer tool changes mean lower costs, lower changeover time and reduced chance to make a mistake. All the screws inside the housing are the same, and coloured black, whereas the external screws are bare metal; again an easy way to avoid an expensive mistake in assembly.
  18. The next images are close up acquisitions of the PCBs.
  19. 12 small LEDs and one big boy. A stack of resistors, capacitors and transistors and not much more besides. There's one 4mm square inductor and one IC which probably serves power management duties.
  20. The side of the PCB with the camera has most of the Cost driving components. We've got the digital signal and video processing IC, which is the Novatek NT96632BG. It's a 32-bit CPU launched way back in 2009, and I found a reseller for $6 on digipart, so let's assume that Cycliq are paying in the region of $3.
  21. The datasheet ( http://www.datasheet-pdf.com/PDF/NT96632... ) suggests it supports up to 1Gb RAM.
  22. Now then, right next to the CPU there's an unmarked DRAM module. It's really unusual in normal consumer products for memory to be completely unmarked, so let's assume it's a gig of SDRAM ($1.5 ish)
  23. The only other component of note on this side, aside from a couple of oscillators, is from Macronix. It's 32Mb of Flash memory and will set you back 76 red cents, if you're in the market for around 20,000. https://www.digikey.de/product-detail/en...
  24. That leaves the camera and lens. I don't know anything much about these; you can get a 30 fps camera module with a similar resolution for around the $40 mark, so if you're Cycliq maybe you're paying $20.
  25. Everything else on this side of the PCB is the expected mix of resistors, capacitors, transistors...
  26. On the back side... ribbon cable connector to the LCD PCB, a couple of push button switches, SD card socket, micro USB (2.0) socket, battery connector, resistors, capacitors, inductors etc. One unidentified IC, which given its position is probably power management. Four solder points for the offboard speaker and microphone. $5 all in?
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