A few months ago I wasn’t able to connect to the FON network. Being a Fonero I logged on at the FON website and noticed the following message at my personal page “Your roaming privileges are temporally put on hold”. My FON router (a FON2200) did not appear to be online!? When I got home I noticed just one sad blinking power LED, instead of three happy blinking LEDs (power, Internet and wlan)… I tried to reset my FON router, disconnected it from the power supply, I even tried magical spells, etc. but that didn’t help at all. As a last resort I contacted the FON support team, they told me my device was broken and needed to be replaced. They were really nice and even offered me a discount if I wanted to buy a new router. I love the concept of FON but was discouraged by the prize of the new router, so I waited…
Last week I had some time to “Google” the problem of my FON 2200. In a blog someone offered the suggestion it was a broken PSU (meaning a broken Power Supply Unit). So I “Googled” further and came with the following solution. I made my FON 2200 USB powered 🙂
Prerequisites (what you need to get it working):
- Hardware
- FON 2200 or FON 2100 router
- old transformer
- old USB cable
- Soldering Iron
- Solder
- Wire cutters
- Knife
- Tape or heat shrink tubing
Step 1 – Preparing the cables
From the old FON 2200 transformer, cut the plug off (I tried to end up with as much length of the cable as possible).
Split the wires apart and strip about 1 cm of the insulation on both wires.
Take the plug from an old USB cable by carefully stripping off the outer black insulation, be very careful not to cut into the inner wires.
Normally you will have a black, a red, a white and a green wire. The black wire is ground and the red wire is 5v DC.
BE CAREFULL WITH THIS, THE GREEN WIRE CAN BE THE 5 V AND THE RED CAN BE GROUND IN SOME CABLES!!!
You might want to check your cable using a multimeter. The others are for USB signals and can be cut off.
The USB cable wires are very fine compared to the wires of the power cable, they will break very easily, so be very careful when stripping the insulation off them.
Step 2 – Assemble the new cable
Before you go any further you need to confirm which cable is ground and which is 5v.
The easiest way to do this is using a multimeter.
The outside of the connector needs to be ground, and the inside 5v.
If you want to use heat shrink tubing, now is the time to bring it in place!
Once you know which wire is which, twist together the wires and solder them.
Make sure to isolate bare ends either with heat shrink tubing or using (plastic) tape.
Step 3 – We have lift off
After this I hooked up my FON router and after about 1 minute I had three happy LEDs and a confirmed connection from the FON website 🙂
In stead of soldering you can of course just buy a new transformer…
Suggestions for improving this article are welcome, please let me know and drop me a line.