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Modify Blink USB key to see the activity LED

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slcasner

Active Member
Supporting Member
Feb 20, 2011
1,536
1,083
Sunnyvale, CA
Blink gave each TESLIVE attendee a USB key drive loaded with their marketing materials. In case you would like to use that key drive for other purposes, such as downloading logs from your Roadster, you might be interested in the modification I did to make the activity LED visible. The key drive has a small plastic window, but you can just barely see a glow from the activity LED through that window because the window is not in the right place.

I opened up the key drive to see what is inside. It is easy to do because the parts are not glued. You can pry off the two chrome-plated end caps with a strong fingernail or a small screwdriver, and then the black case splits into two halves:

blink-usb-drive.jpg


Then, if you drill a small hole in the "n" of Blink as shown in the photo, that will be right over the activity LED on the circuit board. Actually, the perfect position would be just a smidge to the right of the position shown in the photo (like 1/4 of the diameter of the hole).

I would not suggest trying to drill this hole without taking the case apart because the drill would probably hit the LED and destroy it.