Estimote Sticker Battery Replacement

Hi! Sorry if this question was asked a lot before, but: we use Estimote Beacons and Stickers in our laboratory, while maintaining the Beacons are not a problem and they work perfectly, we’ve got about 40 fully discharged stickers on our hands right now. We’ve tried to cut the sticker “rubber” enclosure and replace the batteries, and it didn’t work as expected. For 7 stickers only three show some “signs of life” after battery replacement, none of them are accessible in Estimote app, even if app sees them. The data they send has a lot of faults and errors, they are practically unusable. Other four are simply not starting up while having no visual damage.

  • Is there a “right” way to replace the stickers battery?
  • Is it even possible to replace the sticker battery without damaging it?
  • What are we supposed to do with the discharged devices according to Estimote Company product life cycle? For beacons it’s quite easy to replace the battery, but stickers are another story.

Sorry to hear your stickers run out of juice, hope you managed to wrap-up your project/prototype before that? Would love to understand better what you’re doing with stickers, maybe we’ll be able to help somehow.

We consider the battery in stickers non-replaceable—even if you try to cut it out of the silicon enclosure, you’ll very likely damage the sticker in the process, as you’ve observed.

(Non-replaceable battery is a sacrifice we had to make to achieve the tiny form factor. Such is the price of miniaturization, just like with the latest MacBooks or iPhones.)

I’d check your local regulations when it comes to disposing of electronic devices that include a battery—most likely it involves bringing them to a designated recycling plant.

Hello,

Will you be redesigning the Estimote Sticker to accomodate a replaceble battery? I have a Trackr BT LE token that uses a replaceable CR1620 battery. The token is only 5 mm thick and 3 cm in diameter. It retails for only $10 at BestBuy.

Apple uses the non-upgradeable stratgey on all their products, both memory and battery now under the guise of size. I suspect it’s more of a planned obselence strategy.